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LECTURES

ON THE

REPUBLIC OF PLATO

f. r

MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED

LONDON BOMBAY CALCUTTA
MELBOURNE

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

NEW YORK BOSTON CHICAGO
SAN FRANCISCO DALLAS ATLANTA

THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD.

TORONTO

18J1.

LECTURES

ON THE

UBLIC OF PLATO

;HARD LEWIS NETTLESHIP

TE FELLOW AND TUTOR OF BALLIOL COLLEGE, OXFORD

EDITED BY

LORD CHARNWOOD

OF BALLIOL COLLEGE, OXFORD

MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED
ST. MARTIN S STREET, LONDON

1922

NOV 7 1953

Originally issued in 1897 as Volume II of Mr. Nettleship s
Philosophical Lectures and Remains.

SECOND EDITION, 1901. REPRINTED, 1906, 1910, 19145 i9 2O &gt;

PRINTED IN ENGLAND
AT THE OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

NOTE

A LARGE part of the subject-matter of the
lectures which form the contents of the present
volume was also treated by Nettleship in his
essay in Hellenica, entitled The Theory of
Education in the Republic of Piato/ and again
in an essay on * Plato s Conception of Goodness
and the Good, which will be found in vol. i.
of these Lectures and Remains. Students of
the Republic who make use of this volume may
be recommended also to read the two essays
above mentioned.

In reproducing Nettleship s lectures on the
Republic^ I have followed in the main the very
full notes taken by several pupils in the year
1887 and the beginning of 1888. I have, how
ever, made much use of my own and other notes
of the lectures as given in 1885, adopting from
them, besides single sentences and phrases, many

VI NOTE

whole passages in which some subject happened
to have been more fully treated than in the later
year. In every case where there was a substantial
discrepancy between the lectures given in the two
years I have followed the later version.

In the actual lectures Nettleship used Greek
terms and English equivalents for them almost
indifferently. As the lectures may be read by
some who do not read the original Greek, I have
throughout adopted English words, except where
no English equivalent for the Greek seems pos
sible, or where the meaning of the Greek word

is itself the subject referred to.

While remaining solely responsible in every
point for the form in which these lectures finally
appear, I have to thank Mr. Bradley, the editor
of the preceding volume, for most valuable advice
and assistance which I have received from him at
several stages in my task.

GODFREY R. BENSON.

LECTURES

PLATO S REPUBLIC

K. P,

CONTENTS

LECTURES ON THE REPUBLIC OF PLATO

PACE

I. INTRODUCTION . 3

II. EXAMINATION OF SOME REPRESENTATIVE OPINIONS ABOUT

JUSTICE 14

III. STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM OF THE t REPUBLIC . 47

IV. THE MAIN ELEMENTS OF SOCIETY AND OF HUMAN NATURE

INDICATED 67

V. EDUCATION OF RULERS IN EARLY LIFE :

1. Introductory 77

2. MovaucTji Myths and the Beliefs Taught in Literature . 84

3. Movffixrj : the Art of Literature ..... 99

4. MotK7t/7 : Music and the Arts generally . . . 108

5. Tvj.ivaariK^ and Digression on Law and Medicine . 123

VI. PRINCIPLES OF GOVERNMENT IN THE IDEAL STATE . . 131

VII. STATEMENT OF THE PRINCIPLE OF JUSTICE .... 145

VIII. COMMUNISM AND DIGRESSION ON USAGES OF WAR . . 162

IX. PHILOSOPHY AND THE STATE 184

X. THE GOOD AS THE SUPREME OBJECT OF KNOWLEDGE . 212

XI. THE FOUR STAGES OF INTELLIGENCE 238

XII. EDUCATION IN SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY :

1. The Existing Want of Education .... 259

2. Education in the Sciences . .... 26,

3. Dialectic .........

4. Plan of the Whole Course of Education . . . 289

XIII. SUCCESSIVE STAGES OF DECLINE OF SOCIETY AND OF THE

SOUL .......... 294

XIV. COMPARISON OF THE JUST AND THE UNJUST LIFE . . 315

XV. DIGRESSION ON POETRY ... ... 340

XVI. THE FUTURE LIFE OF THE SOUL . .... 355

LECTURES ON PLATO S
REPUBLIC 1

I. INTRODUCTION

THE Republic, though it has something of the nature
both of poetry and of preaching, is primarily a book of
philosophy. In studying it, therefore, we have to pay
attention above all to the reasoning, the order and con
nexion of thought. A philosopher is a man with a greater
power of thinking than other people, one who has thought
more than others on subjects of common interest. All
philosophy must be critical ; and in thinking facts out to
their consequences the philosopher necessarily arrives at
conclusions different from and often contradictory to the
ideas current around him. Often indeed the conclusions
he arrives at seem no different from those of plain people,
and yet the difference between the philosopher and the
mass of mankind remains a great one, for, though starting
from the same facts and arriving at similar conclusions,
he has in the interval gone through a process of thinking,
and the truth he holds is reasoned truth. What seems

B 2

4 LECTURES ON PLATO S &lt; REPUBLIC *

at first sight the same truth, and may be put in the same
words that anybody else would use, is yet a very different
truth to the philosopher, containing a great deal that is not
present to the minds of most men. In either case, whether
the results, at which the philosopher arrives, are what we
believe or what we do not believe, the first thing we have
to do is to follow his enquiries. We should see how he
arrives at his conclusions before we begin to criticize them.

To study the Republic in this way is difficult. Plato s
ideas are often expressed in a manner very different from
any that we are accustomed to. This is, in part, a diffi
culty common to all reading in philosophy. In arriving
at ideas unlike those of most people philosophy does not
differ at all from the special sciences ; but while the
elementary conceptions of the sciences are approximately
fixed, and the meaning of the terms used can be seen at
once or quickly learnt, it is otherwise with philosophy ;
for the subject-matter of philosophy is of a comparatively
general character, being chiefly the main facts about
human knowledge and human morality, and in such
subjects there can be no absolutely fixed terminology.
Sometimes also, in Plato and other Greek philosophers,
the significance of what is said escapes us just because it
is expressed in a very simple way. The Republic, more
over, has special difficulties arising from the peculiarities
of its form and method ; every great book has character
istics of its own, which have to be studied like the
characteristics of a person.

What, in the first place, is the subject of the book?
Its name might suggest that it was a book of political
philosophy, but we very soon find that it is rather a book
of moral philosophy. (It starts from the question, What
is justice (SIKCUOO-WTJ) ? that being the most comprehensive

INTRODUCTION 5

of the Greek names for virtues, and in its widest sense,
as Aristotle tells us, equivalent to the whole of virtue as
shown in our dealings with others 1 . ) It is a book about
human life and the human soul or human nature, and
the real question in it is, as Plato says, how to live best 2 .
What then is implied in calling it the Republic (TroAireuz) ?
To Plato one of the leading facts about human life is that
it can only be lived well in some form of organized
community, of which the Greeks considered the civic
community to be the best form. Therefore the question,
What is the best life? is to him inseparable from the
question, What is the best order or organization of
human society ? The subject of the Republic is thus
a very wide one ; and a modern critic, finding such
a variety of matter in it, is inclined to think that Plato
has confused quite distinct questions. This is not so ;
he gives us in the Republic an ideal picture of the rise
and fall of the human soul, its rise to its highest stage
of development and its fall to its lowest depth ; and in
doing so he has tried to take account of everything in
the human soul, of its whole nature. Modern associations
lead us to expect that the book should be either distinctly
ethical or distinctly political, that it should either con
sider man in his relations as a citizen or consider him
simply as a moral agent. Because the Greek philosophers
did not separate these two questions it is frequently said
that they confused them ; whereas it would be truer to
say that they looked at human life more simply and
more completely than we are apt to do. But of course
there are questions which we have to differentiate as
ethical or political, and which the Greeks did not thus
differentiate. The reason is that their actual life was

1 Eth. NIC. V. i. 15 and 20. 2 344 *.

6 LECTURES ON PLATO S REPUBLIC

less differentiated than ours; that law, custom, and
religion were not in practice the distinct things that they
are now.

Along with the main subject there are many incidental
and subordinate subjects in the Republic ; there is a great
deal of criticism of existing institutions, practices, and
opinions. The book may be regarded not only as a
philosophical work, but as a treatise on social and political
reform. It is written in the spirit of a man not merely
reflecting on human life, but intensely anxious to reform
and revolutionize it. This fact, while giving a peculiar
interest to Plato s writing, prejudices the calmness and
impartiality of his philosophy. He is always writing
with crying evils in his eye a characteristic in which
he differs widely from Aristotle.

We must next consider the form of the book. It was
not peculiar to Plato to throw his speculations into the
form of dialogues. Several of the pupils of Socrates
wrote dialogues, and the fashion lasted to the time of
Aristotle. The fact that this form came naturally to
a Greek philosopher is part of a more general literary
phenomenon. Greek literature is certainly less personal
than modern literature (the Greek drama, for instance, is
less subjective than ours), but on the other hand Greek
literature is more concrete. Thucydides history differs
from modern books of history both in the absence of
personal detail and in the absence of general reflexions.
The place of general reflexions is taken in Thucydides
by fictitious speeches put into the mouths of actual
persons ; and in this we see that the distinction now
observed in literature between the exposition of ideas and
principles and the representation of persons and character
had not then become prominent. So Plato takes a number

INTRODUCTION 7

of actual personages, some contemporary, some belonging
to the last generation, some of them public men, others
friends of his own, and makes them the exponents of the
philosophical opinions and ideas that he wishes to set
before us. These persons are not used as mere lay
figures; they are chosen because they actually had in
them something of what the dialogues attribute to them,
and they are often represented with dramatic propriety
and vivacity. Nevertheless they are handled without the
slightest scruple as to historical truth ; (the sense of
historical truth is a feature of modern times, its absence
a feature of ancient, and we see this in Plato, just as we
see it in Aristophanes). So the personages of the dialogue
are on the one hand simply ideal expressions of certain
principles ; on the other hand they carry with them much
of their real character. The Platonic dialogue is a form
of writing which would be impossible now. We require
a writer to keep the exposition of principles distinct from
the representation of persons, and to treat characters pri
marily with an historical interest if they are actual people,
primarily with a dramatic interest if they are fictitious.
As a rule, when the form of dialogue has been used by
modern philosophers, as it was by Berkeley, the person
ages are not characters at all ; the dialogue of Bunyan
is the best analogy in English literature to that of Plato.
In Plato the dramatic element is present in different de
grees in different dialogues. The Protagoras is the most
finished philosophical drama, and in the Euthydemus we
have a philosophical burlesque. In the later dialogues
the dramatic element is smaller, but all of them are real
dialogues, except the Laws, in which the conversation is
very slight, and the Timaeus, in which even the form of
conversation is dropped for that of exposition. In the

8 LECTl/RES ON PLATO S REPUBLIC

Republic itself the dramatic element diminishes as the
book proceeds, but is occasionally resuscitated.

While however Plato s adoption of this form is in
agreement with other tendencies in Greek literature
generally, there is also a special reason to be found for
it in the history of philosophy ; the dialogue form has
a serious import. Philosophic dialogue had its origin
in Socrates himself, with whom Greek philosophy, as
distinct from the investigation of nature, practically begins.
He passed his life in talking. It was the impulse given by
his life that produced Plato s dialogues. Socrates is unique
among philosophers because he lived his philosophy ;
he put out what he had to put out, not in books, but in
his life, and he developed his ideas by constant contact
with other men. That he was able to do this was his
great power ; he was a man who, wherever he was and
whomsoever he met, showed himself master of the situa
tion. In his case, then, it was apparent that philosophy
is a living thing developed by the contact of living minds.
We are apt to think of it as something very impersonal
and abstract, but, emphatically, all philosophy deals with
something in human nature, and differences in philosophy
are differences at the bottom of human nature. When,
however, philosophy is concentrated and embodied in
a book, it speaks a language not understood by most
people, and the author, when once he has published his
book, cannot help it if his readers misunderstand what
he says, for he is not in immediate contact with them.
Plato stands between Socrates and a modern writer on
philosophy. He has endeavoured to preserve the living
philosophy in the written words ; he takes types of
human nature more or less familiar to his readers, and
he makes them develop his ideas by the natural process

INTRODUCTION 9

of question and answer. The literary function of the
Platonic dialogue is in modern literature distributed
between different kinds of books, chiefly between books
of philosophy, and novels, in which ideas grow, embodied
in the lives of the characters.

Further, the form of question and answer seems to
Plato the natural form for the search after truth to take.
He constantly opposes this to the mode, which the
sophists adopted, of haranguing or preaching producing
effect by piling up words 1 . Why does he thus insist
on question and answer? Because the discovery of
truth must be a gradual process, and at every step we
should make ourselves realize exactly at what point
we have arrived. In Plato this is effected by the dia
logue form, each step being made with the agreement of
two or more persons. Now, though philosophy need not
proceed by discussion between two people, its method
must always be in principle the same ; a person who
really thinks elicits ideas from himself by questioning
himself, and tests those ideas by questioning ; he does,
in fact, the same sort of thing with himself that Socrates
did with other people. In dialogue two or more minds
are represented as combining in the search for truth, and
the truth is elicited by the contact of view with view ;
in this respect it is replaced in a modern philosophy
book by a criticism which endeavours to elicit the truth
from opposing views.

In addition to Plato s use of dialogue we have to
reckon with his habit of stating ideas in a picturesque
manner. Thus in Book II of the Republic, when he is
analyzing principles which are at work in existing society,

1 See, for example, Rep. I. 348 A and B, and 350 D and E, and for a favour
able representation of the manner of the sophists see the Protagoras.

io LECTURES ON PLATO S REPUBLIC

he exhibits them in what appears to be an historical
sketch. He describes first a state organized solely for
the production of the necessaries of life, and afterwards
makes it grow into a luxurious state ; but he knows all
the time that the features he ascribes to each are simply
taken from the Athens of his own day. This is more
noticeable still in Books VIII and IX, where he wishes
to exhibit various developments of evil in a logical order
of progress, and to do so takes five characters and five
states in succession, describing them as historically grow
ing one out of the other. The result of this tendency
is to make his writing more vivid, but it is misleading
and gives unnecessary occasions for retort. The order
in which Plato s thoughts follow upon one another in the
Republic is logical, but the dramatic or the picturesque
medium through which he is constantly presenting his
ideas disguises the logical structure of the work.

The logical method of the Republic is in accordance
with the form of conversational discussion. Plato does
not start by collecting all the facts he can, trying after
wards to infer a principle from them ; the book is full
of facts, but they are all arranged to illustrate principles
which he has in mind from the beginning. Nor does he
set out by stating a principle and then asking what
consequences follow from it. Starting with a certain
conception of what man is, he builds up a picture of
what human life might be, and in this he is guided
throughout by principles which he does not enunciate
till he has gone on some way 1 . He begins the con-

1 We may say that the ultimate principle of the Republic is that the
universe is the manifestation of a single pervading law, and that human
life is good so far as it obeys that law ; but of this principle Plato does
not speak till the end of Book VI.

INTRODUCTION u

struction of his picture with admitted facts about human
life, and he gradually adds further elements in human
life ; he at once appeals to and criticizes popular ideas,
as he goes on, extracting the truth and rejecting the false
hood in them. Thus neither induction nor * deduction
is a term that applies to his method ; it is a genetic
or * constructive method ; the formation of his principle
and the application of it are going on side by side.

Before beginning to follow the argument in detail, we
must notice the main divisions into which it falls. They
are the following :

1. Books I and II, to 367 E. This forms an intro
duction ; in it several representative views about human
life are examined, and the problem to which the Republic
offers a solution is put before us. That problem arises
in the following manner : we believe that there are moral
principles to be observed in life ; but this belief is in
apparent contradiction to the fact, which meets the eye,
that what we should commonly call success in life does
not depend upon morality. The sense of this contradic
tion leads to the demand, with which the Introduction
culminates : Show us what morality really is, by explain
ing (without any regard to its external and accidental
results) how it operates in the soul of him who possesses
it. What does morality mean in a man s innermost life ?
This question indicates the central idea of the Republic.

2. From Book II, 367 E, to the end of Book IV.
In this section Plato describes in outline what, as he
conceives, would be the best form of human society;
justice is to be traced first in the institutions of this
society. These are based, as he considers, upon the
requirements of human nature. The society is a com
munity in the life of which every element in human

12 LECTURES ON PLATO S &lt; REPUBLIC

nature has its proper scope given to it ; and in this its
justice consists. The external organization, of which
this section treats, is only of importance because the
inner life of man finds its expression in it. Beginning
therefore with the organization of life in the state, and
discovering in every part of it a principle upon which
the welfare of the community depends, Plato endeavours
to trace this principle to its roots in the constitution of
human nature, showing how whatever is good or evil in
the external order of society depends upon the inner
nature of the soul.

3. Books V to VII. Beginning with a further dis
cussion of some points in the institutions of the ideal
society, Plato, in the main part of this section, starts from
the question by what means this ideal could be realized.
The answer is that human life would be as perfect as it
is capable of being, if it were governed throughout by
knowledge ; while the cause of all present evils is that
men are blinded, by their own passions and prejudices,
to the laws of their own life. Plato expresses this by
saying that, if the ideal is to be reached and if present
evils are to be brought to an end, philosophy must rule
the state ; (by philosophy he means the best knowledge
and the fullest understanding of the most important
subjects). In these Books he is occupied on the one
hand with the evils that result from the waste and
perversion of what he feels to be the most precious thing
in human nature, the capacity for attaining truth, and
on the other hand with the means by which this capacity
might be so trained and so turned to account as to bring
the greatest benefit to mankind.

4. Books VIII and IX. As the earlier Books put
before us a picture of what human life might be at its

INTRODUCTION 13

best, so these put before us an ideal picture of human
evil, tracing the fall of society and of human nature to
the lowest depths they can reach. Plato here tests and
develops further his idea of the principle upon which
human good depends, by undertaking to show that all
existing evil is due to the neglect of that principle.

5. Book X. This is the most detached part of the
Republic , and consists of two disconnected sections. The
first half of it treats over again the subject of art, and
especially of poetry, which has already been considered
in Book III. The last half continues the consideration
of the main subject, the capabilities and destinies of
the human soul, by following the soul into the life
after death.

II. EXAMINATION OF SOME REPRE
SENTATIVE OPINIONS ABOUT

JUSTICE

[Republic, Book I.]

THE First Book of the Republic, and the First Book
only, is in construction and method closely similar to
the earlier dialogues of Plato, the Socratic dialogues.
It serves as a prelude to the rest of the work, as we are
told at the beginning of Book II. In it certain accepted
ideas of morality, which in a modern work would have
been formulated as abstract ideas, are embodied before
us by various persons. We must first try to see what
different kinds of characters Plato has intended to
represent to us in these persons.

Socrates is always in the dialogues of Plato the
representative of the true philosophic spirit, but this
reveals itself in different dialogues in different ways.
In this Book it shows itself as a critical spirit which
arrives at no apparent positive result whatever. Socrates
is the representative of an element always present in
philosophy, the sceptical or enquiring spirit which never
takes things on trust, but requires that everything shall

REPRESENTATIVE OPINIONS ABOUT JUSTICE 15

approve itself to reason. What makes a philosopher
is the presence of this spirit, balanced by the conviction
that, though everybody must find the truth for himself,
the truth is to be found. Socrates then in the First
Book comes before us as Philosophy, putting certain ques
tions to certain typical characters and examining certain
accepted principles.

In Cephalus we have the gathered experience of 327 A to
a good man of the generation which was just passing 3
away when Socrates was beginning his philosophical
work. Philosophy comes to learn from this experience,
not to criticize it. Cicero remarks that it would have
been inappropriate for Socrates to question Cephalus.
What he does is an instance of what Aristotle tells the
student of philosophy to do ; we should, he says, attend
to the undemonstrated experience of old men, because
experience has given them the eye to see rightly 1 . The
sort of experience expressed in simple terms, of which
Cephalus is made the exponent, is not what we can call
a jreasoned experience, but the outcome of a life; the
person who has it has not reflected upon it, and is not
in a position to answer the questions which the philo
sopher has to ask. Accordingly, when the criticism
begins and the experience is to be analyzed, Cephalus
gives way to his son.

In Cephalus simple utterances some of the philoso
phical results of the body of the Republic are anticipated.
In him the delight of philosophical discourse has taken
the place of the pleasures of the flesh 2 ; he has thereby
got rid of * a raging and cruel master like the tyrant
love of Book IX 3 . In the course of a long life he

1 Eth. Nic. VI. xi. 6. 2 3280, cf. 485 D-E.

3 572 E sqq.

16 LECTURES ON PLATO S &lt; REPUBLIC

has come to see that, though poverty can mar happi
ness, no material prosperity can command it, and that
character is the arbiter of happiness 1 . He retains
with a sort of apology his old-fashioned belief in the
poet s pictures of a future life, but further he retains the
substantial truth of the belief without the accompanying
perversions. Thus his religious belief in its simple and
yet pure form contrasts with the corruption of popular
religion, which as described in Book II is a gross form of
the theory of rewards and punishments. So the Republic
begins, as it ends, with the thought of a future life.
With Cephalus morality is summed up in the formula,
to have been true in word and deed, and to have
paid one s debts to gods and men, which, if taken
widely and deeply enough, says all that one need wish
to say.

331 D to When we come to Polemarchus we pass from the old
generation of which Plato knew by report, to a new
generation which has inherited the experience of the
old, but in a partial way. Polemarchus, son of Cephalus
and brother of Lysias the orator, was put to death by
the Thirty Tyrants 2 ; he is mentioned in the Phaedrus 3
as a convert to philosophy. Of what sort of person
does Plato mean him to be a type ? He comes forward
in a confident way to answer the question, What is justice
or morality ? not with the result of his own experience,
but with a borrowed principle of which he is not the
master. We have passed from a man whose conception
of justice, though it would not stand as a complete
philosophical conception, is yet, in what it means to
him, substantially the expression of a good life, to one

1 330 A-B, cf. 591 2. Lysias, In Eratosthenem,

3 257 B.

REPRESENTATIVE OPINIONS ABOUT JUSTICE 17

who only accepts the same conception from tradition
He formulates it in a maxim borrowed from the poets,
which he only very partially understands, and which,
so far as he does understand it, is a very imperfect
definition of virtue. The maxim may or may not
be a good one ; with that we are not concerned ; all
depends on how in this case you understand it.

The argument with Polemarchus falls into two sec
tions. In the first he is gradually led to feel that he
does not in the least know what he meant by his maxim
from Simonides, that he is at the mercy of any one who
can manipulate his definition better than himself, and that
his words can be made to mean things quite the contrary
to what he does mean. The argument ends in a feeling
of intellectual helplessness, or consciousness of ignorance
(aTTopia), which it was the first object of the $ocratic
dialogue to produce. The second part of the argument
has a more positive result: it shows Polemarchus that
what he really thought to be the meaning of Simonides,
his own real moral belief, that it is right to do good
to friends and harm to enemies, does not satisfy the
elementary requirements of a moral principle. You
cannot say morality is to do harm to anybody without
contradicting the very notion of morality. A very
similar expression to that of Polemarchus, the maxim
that we should love our friends and hate our enemies,
is criticized in the Sermon on the Mount. The idea was
a commonplace of Greek popular morality l . Thus in
the poems of Solon there is a prayer, May I be pleasant
to my friends, hateful to my enemies.

The method employed in the first part of the argu
ment (331 D to 334 B) is a very good instance of one form

1 Cf. Meno, 71 E.
N.P. C

18 LECTURES ON PLATO S ; REPUBLIC

of what is called the Socratic method. The actual con
clusion arrived at need not be taken to be what Plato
thought the natural consequence of the principle of
Simonides ; that principle might mean many different
things ; the point to which we must attend is how and
why Polemarchus allows himself to be led to the absurd
conclusion to which he is led. His definition of justice is

*"*^^- ..*..*

that it consists in giving to every man what is due to
"h i&gt;p (nfp*,\ nji.fvnuj. Everything depends on the meaning
of ofaiXo^tvov, and the object is to get him to explain
the conception which exists in his mind in a vague
and fluid state. This is done by the Socratic eTraycoy?/ ;
which means bringing forward admitted facts or in
stances, which resemble in some points those on which
a given idea is based, with the view of modifying,
correcting, or destroying that idea. We first take that
sense of ofytiXo^evov in which it means { Jegaljy due/
This is clearly not what Polemarchus means, for an
instance can be found in which legal restitution is not
just. He then substitutes a vaguer word for due,
Trpoa-rJKov. Now - due implies a ^something which is
Hi IP;., and a gnfnpbod}^ &lt;r&gt; w^ **" iq due. To make him
define his conception further, Socrates brings forward
a number of familiar instances of things due to some
body, each of which he is compelled to exclude from
the conception, thereby gradually narrowing it. Thus
the art of medicine renders something which is due to
somebody. On that analogy what does justice render
that is due, and to whom ? This puts justice in the
same category as the arts. What is the point of iden
tity ? It is not a fanciful analogy. Justice is a thing
which enables a person to do somethmg (a bvvafAis which
makes a person dfyaro?). That is the point of contact

REPRESENTATIVE OPINIONS ABOUT JUSTICE 19

between justice and the arts. The just man is a man
who has a certain gift or power of doing something ;
the question is, What? Polemarchus takes the most
obvious instance that occurs to him in which services
are rendered by justice ; he says the just man is
most able to help his friends and hurt his enemies in
war. Then, seeing that the utility of justice must
extend to peace, he again takes the most obvious in
stance, business. This enables Socrates to compel him
again to narrow the conception. Business is a trans
action in which two or more persons are concerned ;
what sort of transaction has Polemarchus in mind?
Money transactions. Taking .then transactions ...that
have to do with money, Socrates shows that there are_
many of them in_jvhich justice^ does not enable a man
jto help his friend. Polemarchus admits that, for
instance, it is not justice that makes q. man useful to
hisJriend in buying a horse, but knowMg p nf hnrspg ;
just as he previously admitted that what enables a man
to be useful to his friend in sickness is the art of medi
cine and not of justice.

By this line of argument Polemarchus is led step by
step to empty the conception of justice of everything
that is of practical value l . This happens because, using
a formula which he does not understand, he is at the
mercy of any superior dialectician. He ought to have
said ; justice. or morality is not a thing enabling, a, man
to do this or that thing demanding specific knowledge,
but a principle of universal application enabling a man
to_do_ well everything that he does ; it is not one among
many arts of doing good, it is the one art of doing the

1 Cf. the more elaborate argument on temperance or self-control in the
Charmides.

c a

20 LECTURES ON PLATO S &lt; REPUBLIC

one good. The whole setting of the argument is so
strange to us that it hardly makes any impression on us ;
yet we might easily throw it into a modern form. Take
any current saying about morality, like honesty is the
bp.st po. ljr.y/_ anH ask any one taken at random to explain
it, and you would probably find him as much confused as
Polemarchus.

The second part of the argument (334 B to 336 A)
begins with the confession of Polemarchus that he does
not know what he meant ; but he still maintains thaLat

rate jnsfirp ig to r\g gr&gt;Qf] fa fronds and harm to

Is this really consistent with the most elemen

tary conception of morality? The argument by which
Socrates shows that it is not, seems purely verbal ; in all
moral discussion however we have to examine words.
What he does is to show that if the words { good ^_and
evil mean anythingLdefinite^.this cannot be an adequate
account of morality, because it involves the contradiction
that cmnH ran \)^ trig cauge of evil. For what is * hurting
a man or dning him harm ? It is to make him worse
in respect of human excellence; the_only way to hurt
a man is to make him a worse man ] . Now whatever
else justice is, it is a form of human excellence, and
therefore to say it is just to make a man worse is like
saying heat can make us cold. So if Simonides meant
what Polemarchus thinks he did, it is not true, and
probably that is not what he meant.

The appeal to Simonides is an instance of the constant
practice in Greece at that time of appealing to the poets
as authorities on conduct and morals. It seems strange
to us ; but nearly all the reflective literature of Greece
was then to be found in the poets. The poets were the

1 This was later one of the chief maxims of the Stoics.

REPRESENTATIVE OPINIONS ABOUT JUSTICE 21

precursors of Greek philosophy ; they first gave expres
sion to the thoughts of man about himself. It was in
poetry, not in prophecy as among the Hebrews, that the
early ideas of the Greeks found expression. The result
was that, when people wanted to find their ideas formu
lated, they went to the poets. In that sense Homer and
some of the other poets were a sort of Greek Bible l .
They had not indeed distinct and formally recognized
authority; they remained literature and poetry on the
same footing as other literature and poetry; but so far
as anything took the place taken by the Bible in English
thought, it was the older poets. In Plato s time the use
of the poets in moral discussion had become something
more than a sort of instinctive tradition ; learning to
interpret them formed a recognized branch of culture.
In this passage Socrates says * Simonides spoke in
riddles like a poet as he was 2 , and in the Protagoras
he parodies the practice of interpreting the words of the
poets as riddles or allegories. This practice arose from
the growing feeling that new ideas about life could not
be got from the poets by superficial reading ; they had
to be read into them or worked out of them. Here
Plato makes Socrates attitude to Simonides one of
ironical courtesy, but his treatment of the poets is
different on different occasions.

The analogy between morality and the arts, which
is employed in the argument with Polemarchus, appears
frequently in Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. It is im
portant to realize what is the exact point of comparison,
and what it was that led Socrates to employ this com
parison so frequently. The arts used as illustrations are

1 Cf. Rep. X, especially 606 E.

3 See also Lysis, 214, Charmides, 162 A, Theaet. 194 c, Protag. 339 sq.

22 LECTURES ON PLATO S REPUBLIC*

not, as a rule, the fine arts ; they are either mechanical
or professional arts, medicine, navigation, shoemaking,
cookery, &c. If the art of the sculptor or painter is
employed in illustration, it is treated in exactly the same
way as these other arts. The point of analogy is not
a resemblance between the products of morality and of
the arts, but a certain capacity or ability which must

^-^^^^^^^^^^^^lB^^^^^^^BlC^^^^^^r!^!!^ ^^- ^SlESjS^^J^I^SMtM^ " "" l~

be common to the artist and the good man. Justice^ is
a power to do something, and so far it is like any art.
The cook and the shoemaker are those who possess
ability to do certain things better than other people ;
and this ability rests on knowledge of their business,
This is the point of analogy with morality. In order
to live properly we must understand life : according- to
a saying attributed to Socrates, virtue is knowledge/
which really means that to understand life is

master of it. In order to be a successful artist at any
thing you must understand the theory of the thing ; and
morality is represented as an art because the good man
may be represented as a master of the art of living, one
who knows the circumstances in which he lives and the
best mode of living. One must not jump to conclusions
and think this means that morality, or the art of living,
can be learnt like shoemaking. The Greeks, who saw
a point of contact between morality and the arts which
is a real one, were not generally inclined to push the
analogy too far, and Plato was at great pains to draw
clearly the distinction between the art of living and
other arts \ the most obvious difference being that the
art of living cannot be mastered in the same way. The
applications which Greek thinkers did make of the com
parison were that morality is nothing at all unless it

1 See Meno and Protagoras.

REPRESENTATIVE OPINIONS ABOUT JUSTICE 23

makes a man practically a better liver, and that, to live
well, you must study life with as much attention as any
sane man would give to learning his trade. It is naturally
supposed that, when the Greeks compared morality to
the arts, they were thinking of the fine arts and meant
that there was a resemblance between a moral life and
a work of art. Many people have looked upon a good
life as a work of art, and that is a legitimate point of
view; but it was not the characteristic point of view
of Plato or Aristotle, though morality is sometimes in
their phraseology described as a beautiful thing (KO.XOV).
To express in modern language the analogy which they
found between morality and the arts, one might say that
morality means a theory or principle .carried out in life.
and that we must make life a scientific thing, following
the example of the applied sciences, in which success is
due to understanding, and failure to ignorance. This
is really the characteristic Greek way of looking at life,
for the Greeks were not only an artistic but an intellectual
people, to whom such a point of view was natural.

Thrasymachus, who next enters into the argument, is 33 6 B to
not to be taken as representing Plato s idea of the sophists Book I.
generally ; for there was no one class of people called
sophists, and they could not be typified by one individual,
nor does the antagonism between Plato and them appear
in one form but in many. The simplest way of describ
ing the sophists is to say that they were perqnns who in
the fourth and fifth centuries B.C. supplied culture to
Greece, or, in other words, who made it their profession
to diffuse and popularize ideas. To understand the
position they filled one should consider what are the
agencies which diffuse culture in the nineteenth century.
There is no one agency, no class of persons with one

24 LECTURES ON PLATO S REPUBLIC

name. But there are, first, writers in newspapers and
periodicals, by themselves a large and various assortment
of people ; there are, further, writers of fiction ; there are
preachers who diffuse moral or religious ideas ; and there
are men who, without being in all cases exactly savants
or philosophers, popularize certain ideas about science or
philosophy. For example, Professor Huxley, besides
being a man of science, is a popularizer of science ; and
again, Mr. Matthew Arnold, though in the first place
a poet, has done a very great deal to spread certain ideas
about life and about religion. Now the Greek sophists
are no more to be thought of as men of a single kind
than any one man is to be taken as a type of the
spreaders of culture in England. The class comprised
the greatest and the meanest men, men actuated by the
most various motives. Some were truly interested in
the spread of education, others aimed at overthrowing
certain beliefs T others had no higher oSject in view than
making a fortune.

The conditions of Greece were different from those
of England, and the particular things in which the
sophists educated Greece were different from those
taught in England by any analogous agency. Nearly
all of them taught rhetoric ; that is to say, the power
of using language as an instrument in Jife. A modern
analogy to this teaching of rhetoric may be found in
the higher education* in England. What is the main
thing taught in the English Public Schools and Uni
versities? An outside observer might say with a good
deal of truth that it was how to use words, that is, how
to understand literature and to write. Acquiring the
power to express oneself is an indispensable element
in education, and in Greece it was absolutely necessary

REPRESENTATIVE OPINIONS ABOUT JUSTICE 25

in order to get on in life. The sophists therefore
nearly all taught rhetoric. But teaching language is
more than teaching the use of words ; one learns from
it inevitably how to think and speak about subjects
of importance. The chief subjects of interest in Greece
were subjects bearing on public life or politics, and the
sophists practised their pupils in speaking on these.
Thus incidentally, and sometimes intentionally, the
teaching of the sophists was a moral education, a.n
education in things which have to do with life. It is
not true to say of higher education in England that
it is f a mere linguistic training, for linguistic training
means getting hold of and handling many ideas ; nor
is it true that the sophistic education in Greece was
merely rhetorical, for the sophists were, to a great extent,
the moral educators of Greece.

The sophists were more or less professional _*ngn ;
they made their living by teaching, and from the neces
sities of the case they had to address themselves to
a certain public and to strive to get influence over
it, just as a modern press-writer has to consider for
whom he writes, and, to a certain extent, has to adapt
his style and matter to his public. This makes a great,
perhaps a most vital distinction between a man of
science and a man who discharges a function like that
of the sophists. A man of science has not, as such,
any interest in the spreading of truth ; he is one whose
function is to find out what is true, whether any one
else believes it or not. Many of the greatest men of
science have been grossly misunderstood by their con
temporaries, and generally their ideas have to filter
through others to the world at large: that filtering is
the work of the sophists. Any one who does this work

26 LECTURES ON PLATO S REPUBLIC

stands, as a man with a gospel to propagate stands,
in a difficult and dangerous position ; he has to com
promise between the truest and most effective way of
putting things ; the adjustment is difficult, and there
are sure to be some who err in it through unscrupu-
lousness. The sophists who appear in Plato include
people as different from one another as a distinguished
savant or literary man is from the most unscrupulous
newspaper writer. Protagoras and Gorgias are repre
sented as honourable men desirous of doing ^ood,
but still as men who, while desiring to be leaders of
the people, really only reflect popular ideas. In other
cases sophists appear as charlatans, whose sole object is
to produce an effect or to make money. Plato s attitude
towards the sophists varies from genuine respect, always
touched with a little irony, as towards Gorgias and Pro
tagoras, to s_cathing contempt, as towards Euthydemus.

Thrasymachus l belonged to the class of sophists who
made their rhetoric the chief subject of their teaching.
We learn that his peculiar strength lay in teaching
how to appeal to the passions of an audience. He
came from Chalcedon. We have no means of know
ing whether Plato is just to him, nor does it matter to
us. Certain traits in this picture of him are common
to most of Plato s representations of sophists. Indiffer
ence totruth. love of money, and caring only for verbal
jvicjxjry^these are characteristics common to all the
inferior sophists in Plato, while a disinclination to
reason and a tendency to harangue are shared by
nearly all. But there are special features in Thrasy
machus perhaps exaggerations by Plato of the features
of the real man coarseness, unmannerliness (which is very

1 Phaedrus, 267 c ; and Arist. Rhet. 1404 a. 14.

REPRESENTATIVE OPINIONS ABOUT JUSTICE 27

unusual in Plato s dialogues), shameless audacity and
disregard of consequences, and cynicism. In fact, it is
not primarily as a teacher of rhetoric that he is repre
sented here. He appears first as a man who takes
a cynical view of political morality, and does not really
believe that there is such a thing as morality at all. He
is at the same time a man who assumes the garb of
science, and will be nothing if not exact (dicpt/Sqs) ; and
he can put his case in a way which, even in this bur
lesqued form, would be extremely effective with a popular
audience inclined to be unscrupulous. The view of which
he is the exponent is one which was very much in the
air at that time, though not often put in this naked
form. We meet with it in the Melian dialogue in Thu-
cydides *, and in the argument between the biKaios and
abiKos Aoyos in the Clouds of Aristophanes. We meet
with it also in the Gorgias, where it is both stated and
answered in a more serious and powerful manner; for
Callicles in that dialogue expresses what is essentially
the same position in the most effective way in which it
has ever been put.

The argument with Thrasymachus falls into two main
sections^ The result of the first (338 C to 347 E) is gradu
ally to elicit from the ambiguous formula of Thrasyma
chus what he really means. This is that the real art of
living is to know how to aggrandize oneself (TrAeoye/cret^)
with impunity ; successful selfishness is thejrue jsnd^ of
life.; the distinction between the so-called just and unjust
is only a difference in the point of view ; if selfishness is
successful it js Just, if not it is unjust. The second part
of the argument (347 E to end of Book I) aims at showing
that, if you take this principle seriously as a principle

1 Thnc. V. 89 sqq.

28 LECTURES ON PLATO S REPUBLIC

on which to live, it contradicts itself, because it is the
negation of all principle. It cannot be made to satisfy
any of the requirements.. of wisdom, goodness, or happi
ness (o-o^ta, aper?}, vbaifj,ovLa). In manner both parts of the
argument bear a resemblance to that with Polemarchus.
Certain terms are taken and assumed to bear at least
a certain definite minimum of meaning, and it is asked
what logically follows if they are taken in their strict
meaning (r&lt; uK/n/3et Ao yw). It is essentially an argument
from the abstract meaning of certain conceptions. It
must therefore strike us at first as unsatisfactory and
unconvincing. We feel that Thrasymachus is thinking
all the time of certain concrete facts, as we call them,
while the argument against him is not concerned with
the question what the facts of life are. It merely asks
whether, assuming the facts of life to be as Thrasymachus
states them, they satisfy certain abstract conceptions ;
whether, for example, if government is universally selfish,
it has any right to be called government. This feeling
is expressed by Glaucon at the beginning of Book II.
Thrasymachus, he says, has been logically silenced, but
the hearers have not been convinced that there is nothing
in what he says ; they want Socrates not only to prove
to them in argument that Justice is better than injustice,
but to show them justice and injustice as operative prin
ciples in human life.^

i. Thrasymachus begins (338 c) by laying down the
proposition that Justice is the interest of the stronger
(Kpctrrtov). The first thing to do is to clear away the
ambiguity of his terms. The . word KptirTav includes
the conceptions of stronger and better, and the first
question is, In what particular sense does he mean
stronger or better ? Putting aside the meaning physi-

REPRESENTATIVE OPINIONS ABOUT JUSTICE 29

cally stronger/ Thrasymachus says that he means the
government or sovereign for the time being, which is
a perfectly good meaning, for the government is always
as a matter of fact backed by force amongst other things.
By his statement that justice is the interest of the stronger
Thrasymachus means, then, that the government legis
lates in its own interest. This however is ambiguous.
It is true that, as he says, the laws of democracy or l(

" n "~ i if * "~ - *__ | I t

oligarchy serve democratic or oligarchic interests, because
a democracy is a community based on the theory that the
democratic interest is the true and best interest of the
state, and so with an oligarchy. But the statement may
mean something else than this, namely that those who
govern legislate in their own personal interests ; and it
soon becomes clear that this is what Thrasymachus really
means.

The first step in the examination of the position as it
has now been explained (viz. that justice is the interest
of the sovereign or government) is to lead Thrasymachus
to admit that there is an art, theory, or principle of
government. Socrates does this by appealing to the
fact that governments make mistakes as to their interests,
so .that what the government commands may not be its }j
reaUUvteresti upon which Thrasymachus asserts (340 C * l
sqq.) that, in speaking of the sovereign or government
for the time being, he does not mean anybody who
happens to be in power, but the persons who, holding
positions of authority, have also the real capacity and
knowledge to govern. By government, he says, he
only means the government so far as it does not make
mistakes. This at once puts us on different ground,
and enables Socrates to advance to a new and important
point. It puts government in the category of applied

30 LECTURES ON PLATO S &lt; REPUBLIC

principles or arts; so that we may apply to it all that
can be said of art in general.

The next step in the argument is accordingly to
develop the abstract conception of art. How does the
notion of interest (^v^epov) apply in the case of art ?
In what sense has an art an interest, or in what sense
has any artist an interest qud artist? (The form in
which the question is put implies the identification of
the artist with the art ; the artist is regarded as the art
embodied. And there is truth in this, for the arts have
no existence whatever except in given persons. Art
means the living artists and what they make; just as
science again means the living states of certain persons
and JJie ..fruits of those states.^ An art may be said
to have an interest in two senses. First, there is__the
interest which would more accurately be called the interest

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of its subject-matter. The arts come into existence
because of certain wants, flaws, or imperfections 1 in
certain things. There is an art of medicine because of
the imperfection of the human body ; there would be
no such art if the body could be kept in perfect health
without it. The interest of the subject-matter of the
art is that these imperfections should be supplemented ;
and in a loose way we may call this the interest of the
art. But, secondly, what is the interest of the art in
the strict sense? An art is a certain power to meet
certain wants or supplement certain defects ; its interest,
end, or motive then can be no other than to do this in
the best way possible ; its interest is its own perfection (on
/jiuAtora TeAeaz&gt; elvai, 341 D). Suppose an artist to be doing
his work as well as he can ; would he feel, gud artist,

1 Expressed by the word iroviipia, which is badness in the sens? of
having flaws, the Latin vitiuw.

REPRESENTATIVE OPINIONS ABOUT JUSTICE 31

a want of anything further ? No ; if he is susceptible
to any other interest, it means that he has gone outside
his art and is something else than an artist. The art
in itself has no want or imperfection for other arts to

supplement, it is self-sufficient. The perfection of art
is its own reward. The argument will be clearer to us
if we speak of the artist instead of the art. We should
allow that the doctor or painter, as doctor or painter,
can have no other interest than to treat his patients or
to paint as well as he can, and, so far as he has any
other interest, he is not for the time being strictly doctor
or painter. Of course it is not implied that he is any
the worse because, as a matter of fact, he has other
interests beyond his art.

Now, to apply this to the art of government, the
relation of arts to their subject-matter or material is
the relation of governor to governed ; they are masters
of itlmcTdeal with it as they like. When we spoke of
^th"e*~g6vefriors Who were really governors, and called
them the stronger or better, it was implied that the
superiority which made them real governors was the same
superiority that any artist has over his subject-matter.
This subject-matter is in their case the community over
which they rule ; government is called into existence by
certain wants in its subject-matter, society. Then if
there really is such a thing as this art of government,
which, it is implied, exists, and if what we have called
by that name is not to be resolved into some other quite
different thing, the only sense in which you can speak of
an interestjof government is that of securing the interest
of the governed. The only interest of the governor, as
"a^governor, is~to govern_well ; and it wesay justice is
the interest of governors, we do not mean it is their

32 LECTURES ON PLATO S REPUBLIC*

interest as doing anything else but govern. Thrasymachus
of course meant it was their interest in quite a different
sense.

This is a perfectly abstract argument ; the result of it
is that Thrasymachus gives up the pretension to be
scientific and logical, which he has so far made. In his
answer (343, 344) he does not touch this argument but
appeals to the facts. He says look at what governments
do/ and gives a cynical, though no doubt to some extent
a true, picture of some Greek governments. They are
like shepherds who feed sheep, not in the interest of the
sheep, but in their own. As a matter of fact, he proceeds
to say, the honest and honourable man comes off worse
in life, he makes less and he is disliked more. The real
interest of the stronger is injustice ; not injustice on the
small scale of ordinary crime, but injustice on a grand
scale. What is called justice and what is called injustice
are in reality the same thing, only described from dif
ferent points of view. If .the doer ,Q. unjust things
is strong enough, then what he does is called justice Jby
weaker men ; if he is weak, then it is called injustice
by stronger men and he is punished.

We thus gradually pass to a different and a wider
question, What is the real nature of the distinction
between justice and injustice? and (ultimately), What is
the real aim or good of human life ? For Thrasymachus
does away with any distinction of right and wrong ; the
only principle he recognizes is that of self-interest ; if
self-interest is successful it gets called justice, that is all.

In the first part of his answer (344 D) Socrates, taking
up Thrasymachus illustration of the shepherd and, the
sheep, appeals to the admitted fact that all arts which
are paid are paid because it is assumed that the artist,

REPRESENTATIVE OPINIONS ABOUT JUSTICE 33

as such, does not work for his own profit. He goes on,
still in a rather abstract way, to develop his conception
of art. He has before considered the nature of single
arts ; he now takes the concrete case of a paid artist,
and shows that in his case two absolutely distinct arts
are involved, his own specific art, and the art of wage-
earning which is common to him and other artists. ,Art.
is the ability (8wa/xiy) to do a certain thing ; its product
t s specific to it (Ibiov). If, then, we take a~steersman
who gets money by steering, and a doctor who gets
money by curing disease, we can distinguish the specific
product of the particular art of either of them, and the
common product, money. That this analysis is true, and
that we not only can but must thus distinguish the two
products, is shown by the fact that a doctor may cease
to take fees, and none the less continue to heal. The
specific product, then, is not convertible with the common
product of the arts. Coming to the art of government,
Socrates appeals to the fact that rulers are paid for their
work. They are paid either in money or position, or
else they have their reward in avoiding the evil to
themselves and the community of the bad government
whidi would rule if they did not. This shows that the
accepted theory of government is that it is not in itself
a paying thing ; and, further, Socrates adds that the
best governors are those who do not do the work for
pay at all, or even for reputation, but simply because,
if they did not govern, somebody else would do it worse.
Advancing upon what he says, we might say that,
the better a man governs, the more he finds his reward
simply in performing the function of government as well
as it can be performed.

Where Plato distinguishes the art of getting paid

N. P. D

34 LECTURES ON PLATO S REPUBLIC

(ju6o-0omKr/) from the other arts, which, in his language,
it accompanies, he is making a distinction which, though
in different language, we also might really make. We
might, for instance, say that a doctor, considered as a
person making an income, was a subject for the econo
mist or the statistician. To them the only question
about the doctor might be, What is the price of his
work? and it might make no difference what was the
specific nature of the art by which he got his income.
Conversely, it might have no influence on the art whether
the artist was making 10,000 a year or 1,000. The
essential point for which Socrates is contending may be
illustrated by what is now a generally admitted principle
as to the payment of public officers. It is that they
should be paid to such an extent as will enable tHem to
devote themselves entirely to their work, and will remove,
as far as possible, the temptation to make money out of
their omces. Thus it is complained that the low pay
of judges in many of the United States has a bad
effect upon their work as judges. The facts to which
Thrasymachus appeals are undoubted facts, but it is
equally clear that the ordinary conscience of mankind
accepts in substance Socrates view of the nature of
public authority.

2. We come now (347 E) to the second section of the
argument with Thrasymachus. Having completed the
analysis of the conception of government, Socrates turns
to a more important question : Is successful, self- aggran-
dizJnenL the true principle of life ; does the life of the
unjust man pay better than that of the just man? For
it has come out in the course of the argument that this
is what Thrasymachus actually meant by saying justice

of the stronger/ To make his exact

REPRESENTATIVE OPINIONS ABOUT JUSTICE 35

meaning clearer, he is led to say that what is called
injustice is, in the true sense of the words, virtue (a/&gt;er?j)
and wisdom

What do these words mean in Greek ? s Aper?j is that
quality in an agent in virtue of which it does its particular
work well ; there is no other virtue than that. The
corresponding adjective to aper?? is ayatfoy, good. A thing
is good of its kind when it does its work well. Thus,
whatever else a good man may mean, it must mean
a man who does his work well, a man who lives well,
whatever meaning you may attach to that. Unfortunately
our words * goodness and * good/ which are the natural
equivalent for apenj and ayados, no longer have this
wide signification when they are applied to men, and
morality and moral never had it.

2o&lt;ia is a specific form of aperrj ; Aristotle, describing
the original use of the word, says it is the virtue of
TtyvTi (that is, of art in the widest sense 1 ). c Wise and
cunning are used in this sense in the Old Testament.
If we look at human life as the subject-matter of a certain
art, then o-o&lt;6s aznjp means a man who is master of the
art of living. What Thrasymachus means, then, is that
the so-called unjust man is the man who understands the
real art of living-. In applying these words, apery and
&lt;ro&lt;pia, to injustice, he is, of course, putting his disbelief
in justice in the form that would seem most paradoxical
to his hearers ; and this is what Plato intends. If, as
Socrates remarks, Thrasymachus had compromised, and
had said that injustice was advantageous though base
(atcrxpoz;), it would have been easier to answer him.

Next we must understand what he means by injustice

1 Eth. Nic. VI. vii. i. He proceeds immediately to give it a very different
sense.

D 2

36 LECTURES ON PLATO S REPUBLIC

? The essence of injustice was traditionally
understood to lie in TrAeorefta, the attemptjto get more
than anybody else of the good things of life. The unjust

tBMHMHM ^ MMVMMHN 6*MMMMMMMW*MMMMMM&gt;MMMMMMMMMMMM^MMMNIH*r - &lt;_&gt; .. . */

man is he who is always trying to get more of something
than somebody else. The dominant idea of justice in
Greek thought was some sort of equality ; that is, that
every one should have, not actually the same amount,
but a fair proportion, measured according to his position
in life or by some other standard. /7*j

Thrasymachus then claims for injustice that it- is the
true wisdom of life, and, as will be understood from
what has been said of the meaning of the words, the
claim that it is the true virtue or goodness is taken
as standing or falling with this ; he further claims that

is the true strength of life ; and lastly^that it is

the fnapplnessor welfare ^aLovia of life. "13 is

&gt;osition is now examined under the head of these three
claims.

(a) On the first of these claims the substance of
Socrates argument (349 A to 350 c) may be stated as
follows. If we examine the principle upon which the
man who is perfectly unjust acts, we find it consists
in the denial that there is any principle at all. He says,
Let every man get what he can ; because he recognizes
no distinction of good and bad, right and wrong, and
does not allow that there is any such thing as a limit
hevond which he ought l:o get no more. Thrasymachus
is taken as accepting this view, and asserting that the
man with no principle is the true artist in life (the cro$o$).
Now let us compare such a man with a good artist or
craftsman in other arts. In all other arts the man who
is without the idea of right or wrong (in the wider sense
of the words), or the idea of a limit at which he must

REPRESENTATIVE OPINIONS ABOUT JUSTICE 37

stop, is not the man who understands his art ; he is the
man who knows nothing about it. For suppose two
musicians meet over the tuning of an instrument ; if they
are really musicians, they at once recognize a principle
of right and wrong, which sets a limit beyond which it
would never occur to them to go ; in plain English, if
the instrument is rightly tuned, the musician, the man
who knows, would never think of tuning it further. Or,
if two good doctors meet in consultation, when the one
has treated the patient rightly the other would not
depart from the right treatment in order to outdo him.
This idea of a limit, up to which you try to go
and beyond which you do not try to go, is that of
a standard of perfection or of Tightness which you try
to hit off exactly. It appears, then, that in all arts the
mark of skill and understanding is that the man who has
them (the erodes or kniar^^v) knows when that limit is
reached. He does not, Plato says, go beyond another
person who understands his art ; or, as we should rather
say, he does not go beyond what he knows to be the
principle of his art. If this then is the case with all
good craftsmen, the unjust man, the man of limitless
n (irAeovefia), wojaldjeem to be the type of the

bad and ignorant craftsman.

Socrates argument seems unconvincing, not only be
cause of its abstract character but for a further reason.
It goes very much to the root of the whole question,
and people are very seldom able to face the ultimate
issues raised by any question. There are several other
passages in Plato that throw light on the argument
here. In the Politictis two kinds of measure (^rpov)
are distinguished tha^b^jajlidl things are measured
against each other in respect of magnitude, and Jhatjy

38 LECTURES ON PLATO S REPUBLIC

which things are measured against each other, not in
respect of their mere magnitude, but in respect of some
proportion between them ; and Plato goes on to say
that all arts depend for their existence on measure in
the latter sense l . A passage in the Gorgias expresses
much the same antithesis as we find here. Callicles is
made to maintain, though more forcibly, the same
position as Thrasymachus, and it is shown against him,
more fully than here, that if you are quite logical in
this position you make life strictly impossible, that the
logically non-moral life is logically impossible and self-

-^* | It II IJ IIHIJ1LI u__._ ^T J ___ ~_f

destructive^, proportion (io-onjs yew/xer/HK?)) is the great
principle that holds life and the universe together 2 . In
the PkilebuS) Socrates talks of limit (we/oas) ; this is
essentially what is elsewhere described as measure ;
it is what makes things measurable which would be
incomparable and immeasurable without it ; and this
principle is declared to be that on which not only arts
but also laws of nature depend 3 . In various other
passages we have the same idea applied equally to
morality and the life of man, to nature and its processes,
and to art and its processes.

There is one total misunderstanding of this idea which
we must avoid. The modern associations of the word
* limit/ and sometimes also those of the word measure/
are the exact opposite of those which these words had for
Plato. The word limit certainly suggests to us something
that stops progress, and prevents us reaching perfection
in anything. The Greek associations of the words, at least
in Plato and Aristotle, are quite different. The idea of

1 Politicus, 283 c sqq. It is in this passage that we find the nearest
Verbal approach in Plato to Aristotle s doctrine of the mean.
3 Gorgias, 507 E sq. 5 Philebus, 25 E sqq.

REPRESENTATIVE OPINIONS ABOUT JUSTICE 39

limit is that of something on the attainment of which
perfection is attained ; it is not that which puts a stop
to progress, but that without which progress would be
a meaningless process ad infinitum. Both ways of using
the word are justifiable ; but it is a difference in the use
of language which indicates a fundamental difference
between our ways of looking at things. The modern
conception, which most answers to the Greek idea of
measure, is that of law. In our conceptions of nature
and morality the idea of law is becoming more and more
dominant. This idea also admits of two different appli
cations. Law may be looked upon as a restraining and
repressive force, or it may be looked upon as an unde-
viating mode of activity ; the latter is the true mean
ing of laws of nature, and it is also the true meaning
of ( measure in Plato. To Plato and Aristotle alike
the natural way of expressing the truth that there is
some distinction between right and wrong, or that there
is such a thing as moral principle, is to say that there
is such a thing as limit or measure, without which it is
literally true that human life would be impossible. The
whole of the Aristotelian doctrine, that virtue is a mean
between two extremes, is an expression of the same con
ception of measure, that the right, or good, or beautiful,
always appears as something which is neither too much
nor too little. With the Greeks the presence of such
a standard is the symbol of the presence of reason in
the world, and in morals, and in the whole of human
life. It is not a moral conception, but a perfectly
universal conception applied to human life. The
characteristically Greek way of describing morality is
to say, that the moral man is the man who recognizes
that there is a principle. That is to the Greeks the

40 LECTURES ON PLATO S &lt; REPUBLIC *

point of contact between morality, art, science, and
everything in which reason is concerned. Thus the
issue involved in this argument with Thrasymachus
is the most elementary issue conceivable ; that is, it
goes very much further back than we are accustomed
to go in our discussions of morality. The question is
whether there is or is not any principle in human life
at all. We, in our discussions about what is * right or
good/ generally move in a much more concrete atmo
sphere. (The answer that Thrasymachus could at once
have made to the argument is, of course, that by the
man who takes all he can (the vXcoy&rft) he did not
mean the man who takes absolutely and literally all he
can without recognizing any principle or any limit at all.
But to make this answer would have been to surrender
the position he had undertaken to defend.)

(b) Injustice, or taking all one can, has further been
represented as power or strength. Under this head of
the argument (351 A to 352 D) the issue is again between
having some principle and having none. Thrasymachus
contention is met by showing that, if we take any
instance of the successful exertion of force, we always
find present some element of unity, some standard
which the people acting together tacitly recognize;
and that absolutely taking all one can, absolute absence
of principle, means incapacity to act together, and con
sequently disintegration and dissolution. In any society,
in the large society of the state, in an army, or in
a small body of men such as a band of robbers, success
inJniustice is always due to some implicit recognition
of justice. This leads Socrates to the assertion that

&gt; - -**wM*M4MMMMi^l

justice is not a term describing a mere external form
of action, but something with a power or force

REPRESENTATIVE OPINIONS ABOUT JUSTICE 41

of its own, which wherever it exists, either in society
or in the individual soul, will always make itself felt ;
and, passing to the individual soul, he points out that
this principle of union is the condition of strength
in it as in society. Here we have a transition from
the view of justice as a matter of external conduct
to the view of it as a living principle in the human
soul which works itself out in the conduct of life. This
is the first indication of a manner of looking at the
subject which dominates the whole of the rest of the
Republic. The^ principle of absolute injustice means
the impossibility of union with oneselt, with other men,
and with God ; and wherever strength is iound, it 15 in

of somp admixture of justice or unity .__
(c) There remains the contention that the unjust man
is happier (more euSaiucor) or lives better than the just
man. In answer to this Plato (353 D to end of Book I)
develops very simply a conception which is the funda
mental conception of Aristotle s Ethics. In the first Book
of the Ethics *, Aristotle asks the question, What is hap- ^
piness (epSat^ozn a), what is the true thing to live for ? And

to answer it he asks. What, if any, is the function (epyor) c.

- j^~

of man as man? Virtue (dpri)_hL_dfinS. as strictly^
correlative to function ; it simply means excellence of
work, excellence in the performance of function 2 ; and
to understand what is said of virtue in Greek thought
one must realize that this is its meaning. In the
present passage the argument of Socrates is as follows :-
Everything which has a function everything, that is to
say, which does or produces anything has a corre
sponding virtue. The function of a thing is that for
which it is the sole agent, or the best agent. The

1 I. vii. 9 15. 2 H. vi. 1-3.

42 LECTURES ON PLATO S REPUBLIC *

virtue of a thing is that quality in it which enables
it to perform its function ; virtue is the quality of
the agent when it is working well. For example, the
function of the eye is to see, and that of the ear to
hear, and their virtues arc seeing and hearing well.
Now the soul of man is a thing with a function ;
it may be said to have various functions, but they
may be expressed in general terms by saying that its
function is to live (the ( soul meant to the Greeks the
principle of life). Its virtue, then, will be. that, quality
which enables fa to JJYg F?U So, if we have been
right in saying that not injustice but justice is the virtue
of man, it is the just man and not the unjust who will
live well ; and, to live well is to be happy.

-. .*... . ,!.!. mm a &gt; *umm+iwftti*tv!r m J. p "" . -V " m J

Here again the argument is intensely abstract. We
should be inclined to break in on it and say that virtue
means something very different in morality from what it
means in the case of seeing or hearing, and that by
happiness we mean a great many other things besides
what seems to be meant here by living well. All
depends, in this argument, on the strictness of the terms,
upon assuming each of them to have a definite and
distinct meaning. The virtues of a man and of a horse
are very different, but what is the common element in
them which makes us call them both virtue? Can we
call anything virtue which does not involve the doing
well of the function, never mind what, of the agent that
possesses the virtue ? Is there any other sense in which
we can call a thing good or bad, except that it does
or does not do well that which it was made to do?
Again, happiness in its largest sense, welfare, well-being,
or doing well, is a very complex thing, and one cannot
readily describe in detail all that goes to make it up ; but

REPRESENTATIVE OPINIONS ABOUT JUSTICE 43

does it not necessarily imply that the human soul,
man s vital activity as a whole, is in its best state, or
is performing well the function it is made to perform ?
If by virtue and by happiness we mean what it seems
we do mean, this consequence follows : when men are
agreed that a certain sort of conduct constitutes virtue,
if they mean anything at all, they must mean that in
that conduct man finds happiness. And if a man says
that what he calls virtue has nothing to do with what
he calls happiness or well-being, then either in calling
the one virtue he does not really mean what he says,
or in calling the other happiness he does not really mean
what he says. This is substantially the position that
Plato takes up in this section.

The last two sections of the argument prepare the
way for the first half of Book II. The view of morality
is becoming less external, we are invited to regard it now
as an inherent activity of the soul. In Book II Glaucon
and Adeimantus demand that this idea should be taken
up and developed.

Before leaving Book I, we may consider two further
incidental points, (i) Thrasymachus is made to refer
bitterly to the well-known * irony (dpavfCa) of Socrates
(337 A )- In the Ethics of Aristotle 1 the ironical man
(tipav) is a person who in his conversation represents
himself at less than his actual worth. In this general
sense irony is a social quality which is the extreme
opposite of boastfulness or vanity. It becomes affecta
tion or false modesty when a person is always depre
ciating himself, and we generally think that such
a person is in reality anything but modest. But the
* irony of Socrates was not a mere grace of manner

1 IV. vii.

44 LECTURES ON PLATO S REPUBLIC

in social behaviour ; still less was it affectation or mock
humility. It arose in him from a genuine sense of the
inexhaustibility of knowledge. We may compare his
expressions of it with the question in the Gospels, Why
callest thou me good ? This is the deeper significance
of the Socratic irony ; compared with what is to be
known, neither Socrates nor anybody else knows any
thing; he was wiser, he said . .than Jhose with whom he
conversed only, beca.ii.se he kpew his own ignorance 1 .
But the people with whom he spoke were, no doubt,
generally more ignorant than he, and if one had been
a stranger talking with him, this perpetual assumption
of ignorance would have appeared a sort of humorous
irony, in our sense of the word, designed to make
Socrates appear to advantage 2 . (One may compare
the expression irony of fate ; we speak of the irony
of fate when we see a man behaving in a way which
shows that he is quite unconscious of the real circum
stances.)

(2) Thrasymachus in the Republic (337 D) requires to be
paid for his contribution to the discussion. It is always
represented in Plato as one of the contrasts between
Socrates and the sophists that the latter took pay
and the former did not. We know from Xenophon
that Socrates, like Plato, regarded this practice of
taking pay not indeed as wrong, but as marking
a certain inferiority in the receiver. Xenophon in
saying how little Socrates cared about luxury or
money, mentions that he never demanded pay for
his teaching. In this/ he tells us, he conceived

1 Apology, 21 D.

2 For the irony of Socrates compare Symp. 216 E, Theaet. 150 c, Meno,
80 A, and Xen. Mem. I. ii. 36, and IV. iv. 9.

REPRESENTATIVE OPINIONS ABOUT JUSTICE 45

he was assuring his liberty, for he felt that those
who took pay for the advantage of their society
made themselves the slaves of those who paid them.
It was not money but the acquisition of good friends
that he regarded as his greatest gain l . Xenophon
tells us too that Antiphon reproached Socrates with
not taking money, because it showed that, though he
was an honest man, he did not know his own interests.
Socrates answered that he regarded wisdom as beauty,
and thought that to sell wisdom for money was to
prostitute it ; that is to say, that truth is something
which cannot be bought or sold, and to put a money
value on it is to degrade it.

)CThe notion that there is a degradation in taking pay
for anything seems absurd to the modern mind. The
whole question is whether, and how far, money taken
affects the motive and attitude of the person who takes
it. Some persons are not affected by it in the smallest
degree ; but there is a very real danger in the relation
of the receiver of pay to the giver, and with the majority
it does diminish independence and clearness of view. It
is often felt now, chiefly perhaps about the clergy, but
also and with equal justice about barristers, doctors, and
men of any profession, that every kind of work tends
to be lowered by becoming a profession. This is exactly
what Socrates and Plato seem to have felt about the
sophists, and it is quite a true feeling. No doubt, by
being professional men whose business it was to com
municate wisdom, the sophists put themselves more
under the public that paid them than they would
otherwise have been, and exposed themselves more
to the danger of confounding what was true with

1 Xen. Mem. I. ii. 6 and 60 ; v. 6 ; vi. 13, 14.

46 LECTURES ON PLATO S REPUBLIC

what was likely to please the public. At the same
time there is no ground for accusing the greater sophists
of having been avaricious ; Protagoras, for example,
is said to have left it to his hearers to pay him what
they thought fit.

III. STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM
OF THE * REPUBLIC 1

[Republic, II. to 367 E.]

AT the end of Book I, Plato himself gives us
a criticism upon it. He makes Socrates confess that
in one way the result of the argument is nothing,
because we have not settled what justice is, and
cannot therefore determine whether it is a virtue
and whether it makes men happy. We have been
discussing the concomitant circumstances of the thing
without knowing what it is in itself 1 .

If we ask what the discussion has done, we may
say that it has shown several things which justice V
cannot be ; that various leading conceptions, those,
for example, of art, wisdom, function, interest, have been
analyzed ; and further that it has been shown that
the theory of Thrasymachus in its naked form will t
not account for the facts that consistent and thorough
going selfishness will not give one a working principle
of life at all. But Glaucon and Adeimantus feel that,
though Thrasymachus has been silenced, the argument

1 Cf. Meno, 71 B.

48 LECTURES ON PLATO S REPUBLIC*

is not convincing. They undertake to renew his con
tention, and they demand an answer quite different
from that which has so far been given. They want,
as Glaucon says, to be shown what justice and in
justice are in themselves, as powers in the soul of
man ; or, as Adeimantus says, not merely to have
it logically proved that justice is better than injustice,
but to be shown the actual effects of each upon the
possessor. This is the question to which the last
sections of Book I have led.

In passing then from Book I to Book II, we pass
from the region of logic, and from an analysis of terms
in which all depends on their being used precisely and
consistently, to the region of psychology and to the
analysis of concrete human nature (an analysis which
leads Plato to construct an imaginary community upon
the basis of his psychology). We pass at the same
time from the consideration of utterances of individual
experience, borrowed and half-understood maxims, and
paradoxes of cynical rhetoricians, to criticism of the
voice of society and public opinion, as it speaks through
its recognized leaders or in the everyday intercourse
of social and family life. To notice one more feature
of the transition from Book I to Book II, we pass
from a Socrates represented as knowing nothing, but
simply listening, questioning, and refuting, to a Socrates
represented as the exponent of a new and higher
morality.

The two personages through whom this transition
is made, Glaucon and Adeimantus, are of a type
that Plato takes an interest in representing. They
cannot be better described than in the words of
Adeimantus himself, where he speaks of * young men

STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM 49

of the day, who are gifted (tvtyvtls), and able to flit
over the surface of public opinion and draw infer
ences from it as to the true principle of life (365 A).
They are greatly interested in speculation, convinced
in their hearts that_justice is better than injustice,
but unable to defend their conviction against the voice
of public opinion in its various manifestations ; they
are dissatisfied with the modern enlightenment, but
cannot see where the real flaw in it lies, and how it
should be corrected. They differ from one another in
character, as Professor Jowett points out ; but one
feeling, common to both, is at the root of all they
say : both are puzzled by the apparent incongruity
between morality itself and the external circumstances
amid which it exists, between the being of things
and the seeming, the externals of life which all seem
to point one way, and the principles which, they are
themselves convinced, point the other way. The
literature of all peoples shows that this has always
been one of the first problems to strike the human
mind.

Glaucon begins with a classification of good things,
based on the distinction of things good in themselves
and things good for their ulterior results. He and
Adeimantus are persuaded that justice is good in
itself and for its results, but to realize the intrinsic
good of justice they wish to have it examined abso
lutely apart from its results; for until you distinguish
morality from the external or tangible results and
accompaniments which are always found connected
with it, you cannot be sure what it is you are dealing
with. Thrasymachus position had resulted in reducing
morality to certain external results of conduct, and had

N. P. E

50 LECTURES ON PLATC/S REPUBLIC

in fact done away with any real moral distinctions.
The object to aim at was to get as much material 1
prosperity as one could ; success in this was called
justice, and failure was called injustice ; there was no
essential morality, but only conventional. Accordingly
Glaucon requires that the distinction between justice
and injustice should be represented in the most naked
way. He will have justice put on one side, and on
the other side he will have put all the material results
of justice that can be separated from it. Strip justice
bare, he says ; set against it all the good things that
may often go with it but are not connected with it
really, and may equally result from being thought just
when one really is unjust ; and then, convince me that
this bare principle, with nothing to show for itself except
itself, is better worth living for than everything that can
be set against it.

This is the view which both young men wish Socrates
to maintain. They themselves, for the sake of putting
before him something to answer, give expression to views
opposed to it, current views, which are not their own but
which they have a difficulty in withstanding.

First, Glaucon represents the view which troubles him
most. It is that morality is indeed a good thing, but
is only good because it secures certain external results ;
it is not the natural good (the best thing), but a com
promise between a greater good and a greater evil ; the
greater good is to obtain the same external rewards
without justice, the greater evil is to suffer the retribution
of injustice. There are three distinct points in Glaucon s
representation of this view. First (358 E to 359 B), he
gives a theory of the origin of justice, explaining the
nature of justice by showing how it arose. Secondly

STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM 51

(359 B to 360 D), he maintains that justice is only pursued
by men as a second-best thing, and not naturally but
against their real desire ; if we dared, he says, we should
all be unjust. Thirdly (360 E to 362 c), he argues that
in this the general feeling of mankind is reasonable,
because if we look at the facts we see that all the
advantages of life are on the side of injustice, or at any
rate may be if the unjust man is clever. The conclusion
is this : it is at any rate a possibility that you might
have to choose between, on the one side, all the powers
and all the material advantages of life, and on the other
side the naked principle of justice. In that case, can
you say that justice is the better of the two? And if
you do say so, then what do you understand by * good ?
Adeimantus gives expression to two different beliefs.
The first (362 D to 363 E) is one which externally seems
the direct opposite of that described by Glaucon, but
which really tends to the same practical results. It says,
Be just ; for justice pays_best in this_world and the next ;
on the \vhole, the just man prospers. It says, Honesty
is the best policy, and it says nothing more. It does
not add, If you can be immoral with impunity, sp_ much
the better. Thus it is widely different from Glaucon s
position ; and yet, like Glaucon s, it resolves justice into
the seeking of external rewards. And therefore it leads,
as Adeimantus points out, to the same conclusion,
namely that the really valuable thing is the reputation
of justice and not justice itself. This, he says, is the
view whTch~ls~inculcaFed in ordinary education and in
family life. The second view he expresses (363 E to 365 A)
is this: Justicejg .jjLJtself Jhg _bgst_ thing in the world,
but injustice is much pleasanter, and, if proper steps be
taken, can be made to secure as satisfactory results ; for,

E 2

358 E to

359 B.

LECTURES ON PLATO S REPUBLIC

to go to the root of the matter, the gods are not just
themselves, but can be bought over with the fruits of
injustice. This is the most thorough-going demolition
of justice, for it asserts that the divine nature, its
fountain-head, can be corrupted.

The passage in which these various beliefs are expressed
has a great incidental interest for us from the light that
it throws on certain opinions current at that time about
religion, political right, and law. First, as we have seen,
Glaucon gives us a popular theory of the nature of
justice, explaining it by its historical origin. This is the
earliest written statement that we have of a theory
which has ever since played a great part in the world,
the theory that moral obligations have their origin
(whether wholly or in part) in contract (vvQr)KvjJ l . This
theory can be and has been applied in the most opposite
interests and in defence of the most opposite positions.
As Glaucon states it, and as we here have to deal with
it, it is simply this : In the nature of things to do in
justice is best, but men have found by experience that
they cannot do it with impunity, and the greatest evil
is to suffer injustice without power of retaliation. Men
have therefore compromised the matter by making laws
and institutions which save them from the worst evil,
but do not secure them the greatest good.

The conception of an original contract upon which
society is based is, emphatically, unhistorical (in some
writers, who have used it, it is avowedly fictitious), but
it has not the less been influential. It is one of the
most striking examples of the reflexion of an idea into
the past to give it apparent solidity and concreteness.
In this respect it is like the beliefs about a golden age

1 See Maine s Ancient Law.

STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM 53

which reflect into the past an ideal which men carry
about with them for the present. Again, it may be
compared with beliefs in a future millennium. It is
based upon a very important fact, that every civilized
community, perhaps any real community, requires, in
order that it may exist at all, ajnutual recognition of
rights on the part of its members, which is a tacit
contract. It becomes unhistorical if one goes on to say
that at a certain period in the world s history people
met together and said, Let us come to an understanding,
and make a society on the basis of contract. This has
never taken place, but the potency of the idea lies not
in the fictitious historical account it gives of the matter,
but in the real present truth which it expresses.

As has been remarked, this idea has been used in the
most diverse interests. It was applied by Hobbes to
justify absolute monarchy, and by Rousseau to prove the
absolute authority of the will of the people. It is easy
to see how it lends itself to such opposite applications.
On the one hand it may be said, Members of a civilized
community have contracted themselves out of certain
original rights, and the existence of the community
depends on the maintenance of that contract ; therefore
a strong government, or at any rate the maintenance of
some government, is necessary, and nothing can be
allowed to violate existing law. On the other hand it
may equally well be said, The present government depends
only on tacit contract, and the people who entered into
this contract are at liberty to dissolve it whenever they
think fit. As Glaucon here applies it, the theory is used
destructively and in a revolutionary interest, to show that
justice js a matter of contract and convention only ; and
there is further a most important implication that all

54 LECTURES ON PLATO S REPUBLIC

convention. and_therefore , all law, is a sort of artificial
violence done to human nature.

The antithesis of nature ((frixns) and law or convention l
IJLOS), which thus lies at the root of Glaucon s argument,
is one which was widely current in Plato s time 2 . Like
many other antitheses, it has different meanings in
different people s mouths, and it generally owes its
effectiveness to the fact of having no definite meaning
but confusing different views. We first hear of it in the
history of philosophy as applied to physical nature.
Democritus distinguished the real constitution of the
physical world from those secondary qualities which

human sensaton Tiot and

cold/ sweet and * bitter, and the like), saying that
the former existed &lt;v&lt;m and the latter z&gt;o fxa&gt;. And in
the various uses of the antithesis we can generally trace
a contrast between that which is radical and underived
and that which is acquired, or between that which is
permanent and universal and that which changes with
circumstances. But no word is more ambiguous than
nature ; and in applying the formula to human action
and feeling, some theorists have held that what is
natural in man is what he has most in common with

the rest of the animal w^ld ; some, at the opposite
extreme, think (as Plato and Aristotle emphatically did)
that human nature is properly that Jn man which most
distinguishes him from the rest of the animaljyorld, the
differentia of man, not his * genus.

&lt;

In one sense everything that man does is natural to

- - * ------- ......... ....... ..... J O . ___ -^.-r.- _

^ science, as much as anything else ;

1 The word vupos combines the senses of law and convention.

2 Cf. Gorgias, 482 E sqq., 492 A-c, Thcaet. 172 B, Laws, X. 888 E to
90 A. Cf. also Aristot e, Eth. Nt c. I. iii. 2 and V. vii. 2.

STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM 55

his nature is all that he does. When this antithesis
between law and nature is made, the antithesis is, so
to say, within man. What then, it may be asked,
remembering all the time that we are within human
nature, is the ground upon which certain products of
human nature are distinguished as natural, and others
as conventional? In the antithesis as it is here used
conventional appears to stand for that which depends
for^Jts existence upon certain mutual understandings
which society necessarily employs. Now, to speak of
these as conventional is to recognize the truth that the
existence of society does in the last resort depend on

~ * - f- _

a mujtual. understanding ; all the institutions of the state
and of society are jforms of mutual understanding, and,
as they are emphatically creations of mar;, there is no
reason why he should not dispense with them if he
wished. If the theory of contract is understood in this
sense, it is not profitable to dismiss it by saying it is
unhistoricaL That does not invalidate the fact, for it
is a fact, that society is based upon contract. And we
may go on to say with equal truth that the existence of
society implies that the individual members of it agree
to sacrifice a part of their individuality, or to sacrifice
a part of their rights, if we call what a man can do
his rights. Two people cannot live and work together
without surrendering something which they would do if
separate, for joint action is not the same as separate
action. But is there any point in representing the results
of this mutual understanding not only as conventional
but as merely conventional, contrasting them with some
thing natural which has a deeper authority? What is
this somelhing_natura[? What would man be naturally,
in this sense of the word? The only answer to the

56 LECTURES ON PLATO S REPUBLIC

question is that he would be r himself minus every th i n g
that he is by convention, and that means minus every-

- .-*..... 1\ . W- , 1 _.. ^ . _ . MM^fe

thing in him which the existence of society implies.
Such a natural man does not exist, but that is the way
in which we should have to think of him.

It appears, then, that whilewe may, in a true sense,
d.ej&gt;cnbe_Ja L ws_anj^ as * conventional/ it does

not follow that they are therefore, in any true sense,
contrary to nature ; and that there is all the difference
in the world between saying that the institutions of
society are based on compact, and saying that therefore
they are unnatural or merely conventional. How is it,
then, that the antithesis between natural and conventional
is so common and has such a strong hold on us, and what
do we mean by conventional when we use the word, as
we commonly do, with a bad signification ? When we
say an institution or custom is merely conventional, what
we really mean is that it has .flfi^right to exist, because
ft JlfL 5 ceased to have the use which it once had. A law
which has ceased to have any justification for its
existence is the best instance of what people have in
mind when they employ this antithesis. And the reason
why there are endless debates as to what is merely
conventional and what is not, is simply that people
have very different ideas as to when the real occasion
for a law or custom or institution has ceased to exist.

While then Glaucon s theory, by which justice is set
down as a something conventional and contrary to
nature, contains the great truth that laws and customs
would not exist but for a mutual understanding, it
ignores the significance of this mutual understanding. For
not only is this understanding the work of man, it is
what man in society has deliberately judged to be best.

STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM 57

How has this deliberate judgment come to be passed ?
If it were true that to commit injustice with impunity
is the real nature of man, there would have been no force
to create society. The strongest motives are those which
impel to action ; and it would be impossible to account
for the existence of society at all, if injustice had a special
claim to be called the natural tendency of human action.

Glaucon, in the second place, goes on to contend that, 359 B
as a matter of fact, justice is always observed unwillingly;" 3 (
that is to say, that morality, public and private, is only
maintained by forcg. Here again a very real and im
portant fact is made the basis of a very false theory. The
existence of society does imply force, which is exercised
in various .ways. In every civilized community the
established order of things is ultimately backed by
the force of the police and the army. There are
a certain number of people who can only be kept from
injuring society by force, and the law of the land caa

"^^^~~ " """" " &gt;.-.!,. . J . - -. . t-^ -^- ^ J_ ITJJI_I__ - - -- mium i | i I .- -- . - -V Ml -

only exist^ if there is physical force in the background.
But it is quite another thing to say that force and the
fear of force, in that sense of the word, is what main
tains morality in the community ; and it would be easy
to show that, if the morality of a community really
depended on force and on fear in the usual sense, it
could not possibly continue to exist. You may, however,
use * force in a quite general sense to include not only
the B2H&lt;jyidjyTinj^^

force of principles, ideas, conscience, and so on. These
agencies are^ rightly called forces. They make themselves
felt in very different ways in different individual cases;
the t force of society acts on a criminal by_ physical
compulsion, and acts in quite a different way on a well-
conducted citizen. But in these very various ways there

58 LECTURES ON PLATO S REPUBLIC*

is great force acting upon the component elements of
society ; and that is the truth at the basis of Glaucon s
argument here. What is untrue is that society, in obey-
ing its own laws, is acting against its own will. As soon
as society begins to obey its laws unwillingly, the;r
abolition is only a question of time. The most thorough
going despotism in the world never existed on a basis
of mere force. If it be said that everybody would break
the laws if he dared, the answer is that if that were true,
everybody would dare; there would be no force sufficient
to frighten him from it. This does not in the least
exclude the fact that a large number of the members
of society do obey the law from fear, and that a large j
number do not obey it at all.

360 E to To complete his theory Glaucon, in the third place,
undertakes to show that this inward protest of the
members of society against the supposed compulsion
exercised by law is a natural and justifiable feeling,
because the advantages of life are all on the side of
injustice. There is no impossibility, he argues, in
imagining all the advantages of life to be secured by
the mere appearance of justice without the reality ;
while the reality of justice might well exist without
a single element of good fortune. This supposition is
put by Glaucon in a very violent way in order to press
home the question, If there is such a possibility as this
in life, in what does the real advantage of justice
consist ? It may be said that what he describes is not
altogether possible ; the appearances and the reality
of justice cannot be kept separate throughout every
part of life ; the consistently unjust man must some
where drop the appearance of justice, and the man who
consistently maintains the appearance cannot always

STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM 59

escape the reality. But even if the picture is overdrawn,
it brings out a very real difficulty, a difficulty which we
cannot get away from so long as we measure the ad-
va I!i^ e __J^L moral goodness by anything other than
itself. As a matter of fact, the world is so ordered

T_- 4

that there is no necessary correspondence between moral
good and the material .....elements of prosperity ; and so
long as people expect to see such a correspondence,
so long as they regard material prosperity as !he_prop er
result of goodness, they will be perpetually liable to
have their theory of the world upset by facts.

In this passage and in several others, especially in the
Gorgias^^ where the true philosopher is represented as
standing in solitary antagonism to the world, we can
distinctly see the impression which the death of Socrates
left on Plato s mind. We find in such passages some
thing approaching to the contrast between the kingdom
of God and the kingdom of the world, with which
Christianity has made us so familiar. It is true that
in the New Testament the antagonism between spiritual
and non-spiritual powers is closely associated, though
not identified, with the antagonism between the poor
and the rich, while of this latter antagonism there is no
trace in Greek philosophy. But the idea of ranging all
the powers that be, and all the external goods of life,
on one side, and the naked principle of right on the
other, is the same in Greek philosophy and in the New
Testament.

We now pass to Adeimantus. The first view that he 362 n to

OQO Jp

represents contradicts expressly that which is represented
by Glaucon, but it brings out more clearly the same
point that Glaucon had made, namely that the preachers

1 See especially Gorgias, 521 B sqq.

60 LECTURES ON PLATO S REPUBLIC

of morality have always in one way or &lt; another confused
it withJts.jTiatcrial results, though immoraTciynsequences-
do not always follow from this teaching. Glaucon ends
by showing that it is quite a possible supposition that
the just should be miserable and the unjust happy ;
Adeimantus first position may be briefly stated thus :
justice secures happiness ; therefore it should be pursued.
This, he says, is the view of parents and of teachers
generally. A certain prosperity, separable from goodness
itself, is alleged to be the natural concomitant of good
ness. Such a view is a natural distortion of a feeling in
human nature that justice should have its reward. There
is a kind of instinctive demand in the human mind that
there should be some reward for good living, that life
should be reasonable, that it should approve itself to
us as just. The idea that God blesses the just man is
expressed in all early literature, and notably in the Old
Testament. It has nothing in it prejudicial to high
morality, till in later times the principle that men are
in some way better for virtue, is interpreted to mean
that good men have a right to material prosperity, and
material success thus comes to be made the criterion of
goodness. In early times the idea is merely the readiest
way of expressing belief in the righteous government of
the world, but as a reasoned theory of later times it pro
vokes the retort that good men do not always prosper.
The ordinary facts of life are appealed to with opposite
motives. Never yet saw I the righteous forsaken, nor
his seed begging their bread ; the wicked have children
at their desire and leave the rest of their substance for
their babes ; each of these is an appeal to experiences
which do happen, and the one appeal provokes the other.
People who seek for a justification of their moral belief

STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM 61

in observations of this kind, and are distressed if they
cannot find it, commit the fallacy of resolving what is
good in one sense into what is good in another; they
start with a wrong expectation as to the consequences
of morality. If a man complains that goodness often
does not bring prosperity there_is a n obvious reply:
If_ZQU believe that what you understand by prosperity
is the real motive and end of life, thejL.Live Jbrjjt ; if
you do not, then why expect that it should have any
connexion with .morality;?

This general idea of morality as connected with
reward is extended by Adeimantus into a future life.
The Eleusinian Mysteries have, he says, been agencies
in increasing the expectation of reward in a future life
for goodness in this life, and for this is the point of the
passage this expectation of reward is made the motive
of a good life. There is a great difference between say
ing that the soul is immortal and that it is better for it
always to be good, which is the burden of the Republic ;
and saying that certain moral actions should be done
for the sake of obtaining certain other desirable things.

The second view to which Adeimantus gives utterance 363 E to
is the natural counterpart of the first. It is one that is 3 5 A
in vogue in private conversation, but poets and prose-
writers may also be found expressing it. It dwells on
the hardship and troublesomeness of the path of justice,
and on the readiness of the gods to prosper the wicked
and neglect the good. What the poets sometimes say
of the indifference of the gods to justice in this life
is reinforced by prophets and dealers in Mysteries.
These teach expressly that sacrifices and prayers and
ceremonies of initiation win the favour of the gods, for
this life and the next, better than justice does. The

62 LECTURES ON PLATO S REPUBLIC

complaint of the poets and the teaching of these
prophets follow naturally from the tendency to identify
goodness with material prosperity, or to make material
prosperity the criterion of real success in life. There
are abundant expressions in Greek literature of this
belief in the injustice of Providence 1 .

In the references which Adeimantus makes to the
Mysteries there are two kinds of Mysteries to be dis
tinguished. We are told first (363 c) that Musaeus and
his son Eumolpus teach men to expect rewards and
punishments of a gross sort in a future life. This must
refer to the Eleusinian Mysteries, which were supposed
to have been founded by Eumolpus. The complaint
Adeimantus makes of them is simply that they en
couraged a belief in rewards and punishments which
tended to weaken belief in the intrinsic worth of moral
goodness. Further on (364 B to 365 A) he speaks no
longer of the state-recognized Mysteries, but of private
mystery-mongers, who were not regular priests attached
to particular places or perhaps to particular gods, but
men who wandered about the country, professing to be
able by spells and invocations to exercise an influence on
the gods and to obtain dispensations for sin. The Mys
teries they conducted were associated with the names
of heroes, generally with that of Orpheus. Against them
Adeimantus has a further complaint ; they encouraged
the idea that the consequences of crime could be averted
by some trifling payment or sacrifice -.

Both these kinds of rites were known as ^vo-TTjpia or
The former word signifies that they involved

1 Cf. Eurip. Eh ctra, 583 and Fr. 293 ; Theognis (Bergk), 373 sq ,
with 743 sq. and elsewhere ; and the Melian dialogue in Thucydides.

2 See Lazvs, X. 909 A sqq. and XI. 932 E sq.

STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM 63

secrecy 1 , and were confined to initiated persons. The
practice of excluding certain classes of persons from
religious rites was originally widespread, and not con
fined to what were expressly called Mysteries. Most
of the gods appear at some time to have had some sort
of Mysteries connected with their worship. The word
re ATj is sometimes thought to refer to the payment that
had to be made at the time of initiation, but it came at
last to bear a reference to a sort of religious perfection
or consummation 2 . These rites have left their stamp
upon language in the words, bearing now a much wider
sense, mystery and initiation.

It is generally agreed now that there was no preach
ing or teaching connected with the Mysteries. The
Eleusinian Mysteries were religious pageants, in which
Demeter and Dionysus formed the principal subjects
for representation. The two main ideas which these
pageants expressed were that of the earth as the place
of the dead, and that of the earth as the womb of life.
These were symbolized by Demeter looking for her
lost daughter Persephone, and by Persephone s return.
Like all symbolism, this depended very much upon the
mind of the worshipper for the interpretation put upon
it. In Greek literature we find evidence both of very
gross and of very exalted views of the Eleusinian Mys
teries. The idea which attached to them, that the future
of the soul was to dwell for ever with God, was an
exalted idea, but it was capable, of course, of perversion ;
a passage in Sophocles which expresses it is said to
have provoked Diogenes to the question whether an
initiated thief was really to be better off in the other

to shut the lips.
Tf\fiadai meaning both to be perfected and to be initiated.

64 LECTURES ON PLATO S REPUBLIC

world than a hero like Epaminondas l . Like the Eleu-
sinian, the Orphic Mysteries clearly had their higher and
their lower side, the higher interpretation of them ex
pressing the idea that the life of the soul was unending,
and that it expiated in one stage of existence any crimes
it had committed in a previous stage.

There has been much discussion as to the effect of the
Mysteries in inculcating the belief in one God and the
belief in a future state. There is really no ground for
supposing that they had anything to do with the former
belief, but with the latter they had a good deal to do.
They both recognized it and gave a solemn and magnifi
cent expression to it ; and, though there is no evidence
that there was direct teaching or preaching, there is no
doubt that the Mysteries did contribute to intensify and
diffuse brighter views about the future of the soul than
had been held in the early times of Greece. It has
often been noticed that the expectation of rewards after
death for good done in the body is a late idea ; the idea
of future punishment appeared earlier and took more
hold on the Greek mind. In Homer the life after death
has very little place ; it is at most a negative, bloodless
sort of existence -. As men began to think more about
the good and evil in life, and as their views on the
subject became deeper, the fate of the soul for good or
evil not only in life but after death became a subject for

1 See Plutarch, Moralia, p. 21 F, where Soph. Fr. 719 (Dindorf) occurs.
Other passages showing the higher view of the Mysteries (Eleusinian
or Orphic) are Pindar, Fr. 137 (Bergk), the Homeric Hymn to Demeier,
478 sq., and Isocrates, Paneg. 28 ; also in Plato himself, Crat. 400 c,
Phaedo, 62 B and 69 c, and Laws, IX. 870 D. Examples of the grosser
view may be found in Aristophanes, Frogs, 146 to 163, and Peace, 374-5.

a The Eleventh Book of the Odyssey, where Odysseus visits the spirits
of the departed, is generally supposed to be later than the rest.

STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM 65

consideration ; the interest taken in the idea of a future
life was an extension of growing thoughtfulness about
this life. In Aeschylus, as in Pindar, we find the idea
of punishment for sin after death, but the strong belief
in future rewards which we find expressed in Pindar
is peculiar to him among the older poets. All the
comfortable ideas about death and the future life which
grew up in a later time, seem to have received expres
sion in the Eleusinian, and still more in the Orphic,
Mysteries.

In the concluding part of his speech Adeimantus 365 A to
sums up what is common to the views which he and c
Glaucon have put forward. They all depend upon the
one belief that justice and injustice are to be sought
or_aycjded, not for their own sake, but for the sake of
something else. He proceeds to put in a vivid way the
difficulty in which men like himself and Glaucon find
themselves. They see the whole of public opinion arrayed
upon the side of this belief ; and, further, the burden of
most that they hear is that with skill and by proper
devices we may commit injustice, without forfeiting the
material rewards of justice. As for the gods, either
there are none at all, or, if there are, we only know
of them through the poets, and these poets all represent
them as open to corruption. In the face of this almost
irresistible mass of public opinion what is there to keep
a man from injustice except weakness and want of spirit?
He can only be saved from it in two ways by some
divine grace or inspiration which gives him an instinctive
repulsion from injustice l , or by his somehow coming to

1 Plato is fond of using the phrases 0eia &lt;ptffis and Oeia poTpa or dda
TVVJJ, to express the idea of some unaccountable influence to which it is
due that justice does not perish out of the world entirely. Cf. 368 A and
N. P, F

66 LECTURES ON PLATO S REPUBLIC

understand its nature better than it is generally under
stood now.

The cause of this difficulty is that no one has yet ade
quately explained what, are the intrinsic good and evil
which justice and injustice, whether seen or unseen, have
in them. This is what Socrates is now called upon to
explain, dismissing for the present all consideration of
the results to which justice and injustice lead through the
impression they produce on others (8o a) 1 .

This brings us to the end of the introductory part
of the Republic ; the constructive part of the work now
begins.

VI. 492 A. This is also elsewhere contrasted with ImffTjy/t?;, reasoned
conviction or knowledge.

1 $6a means either what seems to me or what seems to others about
me, the impression I receive or the impression I make. Here of course
it is the latter.

IV. THE MAIN ELEMENTS OF SOCIETY

AND OF HUMAN NATURE

INDICATED

[Republic, II. 367 E to 376 E.]

THE problem, which has been put before Socrates
and reiterated again and again, is to show what is tiie
effect of justice or injustice on the soul of the man that
has it, or, as we should rather say, on the life of the man,
and especially on his inner life. There seems at first
sight scarcely any connexion between this question and
the answer that he proceeds to give to it. For he begins
by passing suddenly to the subject of the genesis of
society. To understand the import of this transition is
to understand the principle of the whole argument of
the Republic.

To explain the method of his answer Socrates tells us 367 *

L ^

that it will be very difficult to show the effect of justice c
in the inner life of the individual man, and that it will
be best not to begin by an analysis of the soul but by
looking at human nature where it can be seen on a large
scale in large letters, as he puts it in the broad
outlines of the state and of society. Beginning with the

F a

68 LECTURES ON PLATO S REPUBLIC

outside of human nature where it is easy to read, we are
afterwards to try and read it on the inside with these
Marge letters in our mind. In other words, his method
is to analyse facts about human nature which are ap
parent to everybody, and to examine the significance of
those facts till he arrives eventually at the inmost prin
ciple of human nature of which they are the expression.
The whole Republic is really an attempt to interpret
human nature psychologically ; the postulate upon which
its method rests is that all the institutions of society,
class organization, law, religion, art, and so on, are
ultimately products of the human soul, an inner principle
ofjife which works itself out in these outward shapes.

Plato s position is sometimes described by saying he
assumes that there is an analogy between the individual
state, and that the life of the individual is the

counterpart of the life of the state ; but this is not an
adequate description of it. His position is that the life
of the state is the life of the men composing it, as
manifested in a way comparatively easy to observe.
Later on, when he speaks of the justice or courage of the
state, he means the justice or courage of the citizens
as shown in their public capacity. The ( justice of the
state, then, is the justice of the individuals who compose
it. This does not mean that justice in a state manifests
itself in exactly the same way as justice in a private
individual, but simply that, if there is such a thing as
justice, its essential nature is the same, however and
wherever it manifests itself, whether in a man s private
life or in his public relations. It is true that the virtue
of the state is a larger thing than the virtue of individuals ;
a nation is brave when its army is brave, and the army
is a greater and more conspicuous thing than a single

ELEMENTS OF SOCIETY AND HUMAN NATURE 69

person ; but the courage of the state as shown in its
army is the manifestation, in the public action of certain
men, of the same principle that makes men brave in all
the relations of business or of private life. We must
bear in mind throughout Plato s argument that there is
no state apart from the individual men and women who
compose it.

We have now to notice a second feature in Plato s 369 A to
method ; the state is to be looked at in its origin and 376 E&lt;
growth. The phrase, origin of society, suggests to us
at first the most elementary state of society historically
discoverable ; but we must put that idea aside, for that
is not what interests Plato here. He is not concerned
with an historical enquiry, such as how Athens came to
be what she was, but with this question : Given the fact
of society as it is, what are the conditions which its
^existence implies, what is it in human nature which
makes society exist ? The question is not by what stages
society has grown up but how it is that it exists at all.
We gather, though he does not tell us, that in what
follows hejpursues not the historical order of development
but the logical order. That is to say, he takes society
roughly as it is and begins aj wb at seems its lowest
gpint^at that aspect of society in which it is an organiza
tion for the satisfaction of certain physical wants. This
may be called the lowest psychological basis of society ;
for if man had only these wants he would be a fragment
of what he actually is. Beginning then with this, Plato
asks, regarding man as a creature of these wants, what
there is in him to produce society. As he goes on he
brings in gradually the higher elements of human nature,
until he has made the picture of society complete in its
main outlines ; and at each stage he asks what, if any,

7 o

LECTURES ON PLATO S REPUBLIC

seems to be the principle of the good life of society at
that stage. By the end of the first section of his argu
ment (376 E) the main constituent elements which go to
make up human life have been put before us. Given
these, we proceed to consider the development and
education of them.

We should have a modern parallel to this method if
a sociologist, taking England as it is, were to set out
from the idea that, since life would not go on at all if its
necessaries were not provided, the life of England rests
ultimately on its industrial organization, and were to
proceed to ask whether there was any principle of good
and bad, right and wrong, discoverable in this industrial
organization. But Plato has embarrassed us by the form
of his enquiry. Instead of putting the question in an
abstract way, he has put it in a picturesque way, asking
us to imagine a society of human beings engaged merely
in the most obviously useful industrial occupations. Thus
he appears to be describing an actual historical beginning,
and as a description of this, the picture he draws is open
to obvious criticisms ; for instance, both builders and
shoemakers would be out of place in a really primitive
society. Of course the substance of the picture is taken
direct from Plato s own time. We may call it a logical
picture of the origin of society in this sense, that it
illustrates what the existence and maintenance of society
demands, and how those various demands can best be
satisfied, taking those demands in a certain logical order.

First then (369 B to 372 D) Plato sketches, in mere
outline, the elementary conditions of society so far as it
exists for the production of the necessaries of life. His
state is to be one whose function is to satisfy necessary
wants alone (di/ayKatorar?/ woAis), as distinguished from

*&gt;

LIBRARY

ELEMENTS OF SOCIETY AND HUMAN NATURE 71

the unnecessary appetites which the luxurious state
(rpvfySxja TTO XIS) aims at satisfying in addition. In this
sketch the fundamental principles of the Republic, which
constantly recur later in a developed form, are clearly
seen. What is the general principle which produces
human society? It is want in various forms. Society
depends upon a double fact : the fact that no man is
sufficient for himself (avTapK-ns), and the complementary
fact that other men want him. While every man is
insufficient for himself, every man has it in him to give
to others what they have not got. This is what we may
call the principle of reciprocity ; the limitation of the
individual goes along with the fact that he supplements
the limitations of others. Throughout the Republic this
conception is adhered to. The whole growth of society
is one great organization, resting upon this principle, for
the satisfaction of various human wants.

This passage looks at first sight like an elementary
treatise on political economy, but the principle which is
here put before us in its economic form is not to Plato
an economic principle ; what economists call the principle
of the division of labour is to him a moral principle.
Nevertheless his first illustration of it is taken from
productive labour. What, he asks, are the conditions
under which production will be most successful ? Pro
duction will be largest, easiest, and best if the producer
confines himself to one special work^does his own work
as well as he can, and shares the results with others.
Nature has pointed out this principle ; for no two men
have been made exactly the same. The very fact of
individuality organizes men for the community ; each
man wants others and can contribute something to them.

This principle results in the gradual growth of industrial

72 LECTURES ON PLATO *S REPUBLIC

society through the specialization of productive functions.
Accordingly we find pastoral industry, agricultural in
dustry, and mechanical industries of various sorts, practised
by distinct classes of producers. Next we notice, arising
from the same cause, the phenomena of retail trade and
of currency; and along with these an export and an
import trade, which are the application of the same
principle to the state in its relations with other states.
These are the main constituents of an industrial com
munity, or a community regarded as an organization for
producing the necessaries of life. Where in all this, asks
Socrates, is justice to be found ? Probably, Adeimantus
answers, somewhere in the mutual needs of these people
(371 E).

But the answer thus suggested is not developed till
we have gone a great deal further with the organization
of society. The mention of justice leads to the question,
how would a community such as we have described live,
confined as it is to the normal and healthy satisfaction of
elementary wants ? Socrates here describes a people living
a life of animal simplicity. Their life would be little
better, says Glaucon, than that of a city of pigs. Human
society cannot stop at this elementary point, in a con
dition of idyllic innocence in which merely these bare
wants are satisfied ; for this life of ideal simplicity devoid
of progress (like the life of the South Sea Islanders
imagined in Tennyson s Lockslcy Hall) excludes the
greater part of the elements which make up human life
as we know it ; it excludes civilization.

Plato therefore proceeds to sketch briefly the elements
of civilization, in a description of the luxurious state
(372 D to 373 E). He describes the growth of social
refinement, of luxury, and the material appliances of

ELEMENTS OF SOCIETY AND HUMAN NATURE 73

life ; the growth also, as accessories to this development,
of the fine arts, the decorative arts and poetry ; and, further,
the complication of the conditions of health and the
consequent growth of medicine. In this expansion of
human nature we have seen added to the necessary
wants of man further wants, capable of leading to his
highest development, capable, at the same time, of
leading to all sorts of extravagance and evil. We
have also, as we shall find, got additional elements in
human nature to consider. The state as first described
exhibited the working of that element which Plato calls
appetite, that which seeks the satisfaction of material
wants ; in the more developed state we shall see, dis
tinguished from this, what he calls the element of spirit
and what he calls the philosophic element. These two
elements in human nature afterwards appear to be the
causes of the growth in civilization here pictured. Plato s
conception of these two elements in man is only gradually
put before us.

The other side to the development of material
comfort is, we are told, the rise of war (373 E), for
the expansion of human wants beyond bare necessity
brings with it the desire of aggression. Plato, however,
passes immediately from aggression, which is the origin
of war, to defence, which is its justification. The function
of the military organization of the state, which he now
at once proceeds to consider, is to protect the state against
aggression and to assist in maintaining internal order ; for
conquest is nowhere recognized by Plato as the true end
for which the state should be organized l . Having now
brought to our notice the necessity for armed force in the
state, he has put before us the natural elements which go to

1 Cf. Aristotle, Pol 1333 &gt; S &lt;!

74 LECTURES ON PLATO S &lt; REPUBLIC

make up the life of human society as it is. He has done
so without distinguishing the good and the bad in them.
In the defence of the community we have clearly
a social function of vital importance, and the principle
of the specialization of functions will therefore apply
still more rigidly here. If, as we have seen, nature
has specially adapted people for particular kinds of
work, and if it is important for the production of com
modities, to get the right nature for the right work, much
more will it be important for the_purpose of guarding
the state. This leads Socrates to take up, as the
foremost problem that concerns the organization of
the state, the question wh^f snrt o f nature will make
what he calls a good Guardian* of the state. Clearly
it must be a nature good for fighting, a nature possessed
o .spirit (Ov^os or ro tfu/zoetSe s), the righting element in
human nature (375 A). This is not merely the instinct of
aggression, but rather that which prompts to resistance ;
it is described as something unconquerable, which makes
a man in all things fearless and not to be beaten. But the
Guardians must also possess in a high degree an element
complementary to this ; for if we imagine men entirely con
sisting of spirit such men would simply tear one another
in pieces ; a society composed of them could not exist.
The complementary element, which is wanted in the
Guardians, is an element of attraction instead of repul
sion. This is what Plato (375 Esq.) calls the philoso
phic element (ro (friXocrotyov). There is even in the lower
animals something which draws them to what they
know and are familiar with, and this is an elementary
form of the, philosophic element in man, which is
something in man s nature in virtue of which he is at
tracted to whatever he recognizes as akin to him. It

ELEMENTS OF SOCIETY AND HUMAN NATURE 75

may be an attraction to human beings, friends, relations
or fellows, or it may be not to human beings but to other
objects, either beautiful things in nature or art, or truth
in science or philosophy. Plato never abandons this way
of looking at human affection and at human reason.
Philosophy in man is that which draws him to what he
Recognizes, as the dog instinctively feels at home with
those whom he knows. Familiarity, to put it abstractly,
is the basis of affection. The real meaning of this passage
where the dog is discovered to be philosophic because it
likes those it knows, comes out as we read the rest of the
book. It is, as is so often the case in Plato, an anticipa
tion of what he says more intelligibly later on. In Book
III he speaks of the love of beauty as a sort of recogni
tion by the soul of what is akin to it in the world about
it ; the soul welcomes (acrna^rai) what is beautiful from
a sense of kinship. In Book VI the desire of knowledge
and truth is represented as the desire of the soul to unite
itself to what is akin to it in the world. Not to go further
into these two passages, the point common to them and
to the present passage is that the element of the soul
which Plato calls the philosophic, is described as con
sisting in a feeling of attraction to something other than
oneself and yet akin to oneself.

From the manner in which these two last elements
in human nature are brought in, Plato might be thought
to be describing some special form of human nature
exhibited only in exceptional persons ; but we find as we
go on that he is really describing what he takes to be
normal human nature, and that every man must have
in him something of each of the three elements, the
element of appetite, the element of spirit, and the philo-
sophic element.

76 LECTURES ON PLATO S * REPUBLIC

Thus we have given us the main elements of society
without which human life as it is could not go on. It
could not go on unless animal wants were satisfied,
unless men could protect themselves, and unless men
were somehow drawn to one another. The two higher
elements in human nature are here deduced from these
requirements of society. The process could equally
well have been reversed, and it could have been shown
that, human nature having these elements in it, the
essential features of society necessarily result.

V. EDUCATION OF RULERS IN

EARLY LIFE

[Republic, II. 376 c to III. 412 B.]

i. INTRODUCTORY.

AFTER this slight introduction of his conception of
the main elements of human nature which tend to bring
about society, Plato passes rapidly to a discussion of the
nurture and education of that nature. He has fixed
his attention on one function of the greatest importance
in the state, that of defence, and he has told us that those
who are to discharge this function must be men in whose
nature the two higher elements are strongly developed.
His next question accordingly is, how such a character
ought to be trained, and he proceeds to consider the
education which will fit it most fully for the highest
functions in the state. Nature (^va-is) and nurture

are the two things which go to make up human
character. Neither will do without the other; you
cannot create the required nature, but you can by
nurture do everything short of that ; and without the
proper nurture the best nature is as likely to turn out ill
as to turn out well.

Plato s general view of education is most forcibly

78 LECTURES ON PLATO S REPUBLIC*

expressed in Book VII 1 . Its object is there said to be
to turn the eye, which the soul already possesses, to the
fight. The principle which Plato conveys by this meta
phor is that the whole function of education is not to put
knowledge into the soul, but to bring out the best things
that are latent in the soul, and to do so by directing it
to the right objects. How is this to be done? First,
by surrounding the soul with objects which embody
those ideas and characteristics which are to be developed
in it. The method Plato advocates depends upon the
theory that the human soul is essentially an imitative
thing, that is, that it naturally assimilates itself to its
surroundings. His belief in the overwhelming impor
tance to the soul of the surroundings in which it grows
up is most forcibly put in Book VI, where he represents
the human soul as a living organism, and says that, just
as a plant when sown in the ground develops according
to the soil and the atmosphere it lives in, so it is with
the soul 2 . The soulj he jcpnsiders, is indestructible, but,
though ill-nurture cannot entirely destroy jt, it may very
nearly do so. The problem of education, then, is to give
it the right surroundings. The chief way in which its
surroundings affect it is, Plato thinks, through its tendency
to become like the things it is accustomed to ; it is, he
says, impossible to be constantly with a thing you admire
without becoming like it ; and so, in the system of
education which he first describes, nothing is said of
direct teaching ; the whole system consists in surrounding
the soul with objects like what it is to be, that it may
live in a healthy atmosphere. The first and most
obvious instance of this imitative tendency is the force
with which the example of other men acts upon us ;

1 518 B sq. 2 VI. 491 D.

EDUCATION OF RULERS IN EARLY LIFE 79

hence the importance of accustoming the soul to think
about great men and to have a worthy conception of the
gods it worships. But the same thing is revealed in
another aspect when we come to consider the effect of art,
for the soul, Plato thinks, assimilates beauty from con
templating it ; and a third aspect of the same fact will
be found when he deals with the education of science.
The soul, then, adapts itself to its environment, and it is
all-important what the environment is 1 .

The next question for consideration is, What instru
ments of education did Plato find ready to his hands 2 ?
He found literature the main instrument. Every Athe
nian gentleman was brought up on a system of what we
should call general culture, studying the standard litera
ture of his country ; there might be added to this an
elementary knowledge of some art, and the rudiments
of the sciences of numbers and figures. Plato also found
gymnastics in common practice. These agencies he
adopted, and gave them a new and deeper significance.
He conceived that in early life the main instruments for
bringing out what was best in the soul were, first, litera
ture, beginning with stories for children and going on to
poetry ; secondly, music in our sense of the word, playing
and singing ; and thirdly, the plastic arts (as we should
call them) in general. All these come under the head of

In Books II and III Plato deals with education in
Hova-iKy. In Books VI and VII he describes a further
and more elaborate system of education for later life.

1 Cf. 383 c, 391 E, and 401 A to 403 c, especially 401 D.

2 See Aristotle, Politics, 1337 B sq.

3 Compare the word arts, which, in addition to its ordinary use, is
employed, in such terms as Bachelor of Arts, with special reference to
literature.

8o LECTURES ON PLATO S REPUBLIC

The education in /ULOIKTIK?} would, he conceives, go on till
manhood, that is, to the age of eighteen, when it was to
be succeeded by a special gymnastic training intended
to fit the young citizens for military and other duties
which require a strong and healthy physique. Then was
to come an education in science, leading to philosophy.
The education in ^OVCTLKT] and this we must remember
in reading these books which deal with it alone would
be accompanied all along not only by a certain amount
of gymnastic training, but by elementary teaching in
science \

The next point to be noticed, though it does not
become apparent till this section of the Republic is read
in connexion with Books VI and VII, is that the order
of education is based on a certain theory concerning the
nature of the soul. The soul is reached at different
stages of its growth by different agencies and through
different media. It is affected in the first place through
certain susceptibilities which we should perhaps call
fancy and imagination. The education described in
Books II and III is an education through these, and acts
upon the soul in that stage of growth in which imagi
nation, fancy, and feelings are the strongest things in it.
It is supplemented in Books VI and VII by an education
calculated to act on the soul when reason has begun
to develop and to require training. That which the
training in /xot o-i/o/ ought essentially to produce is love
of what is beautiful (Ipco? TOV Kakov), love of the beautiful
in whatever form it appears. By the education which
supplements it at a later stage, the soul is to be made
receptive of truth, as before of beauty ; the object of
training in the sciences is to make the soul love truth

1 See Book VII. 533 D and 537 c.

EDUCATION OF RULERS IN EARLY LIFE 81

The ultimate purpose of both kinds of
education is to present to the soul the good under various
forms, for beauty is the good under a certain form, and
so also is truth. The good in Book VI is that supreme&lt;-
source of light of which everything good, everything true,
and everything beautiful in the world is the reflexion,
and if education could reach its utmost aim it would be
in the knowledge of this. The greatest thing a man can
learn is to see according to a man s measuj-e_thQ.prosejic^
of reason and divine intelligence in the world about him.
So from its earliest stages education is a method of
helping the soul to see the good, but in all kinds of
different ways.

The object, then, of early education should be to
present to the soul in various imaginative formsjhe. good
which it will afterwards come to know in rational forms.
Through what forms and in, what order is this to be
done? With what does education begin? It begins with
religion ; that is to say, the good is presented to the
soul first in the form of a being who is perfectly good
and true ; and the purpose of teaching about such a being
is that the soul may be as like God as possible 1 . Hence
the importance of determining the true nature of God,
and of putting it before the minds of children in the
simplest and clearest way. Accordingly, Plato s system
of education begins with stories of a mythological kind,
treating of the divine nature, whose very essence is to be
good and true ; stories which, though in a poetical form,
are about the same object that is afterwards to be
presented to the soul as a study for the reason. Beginning
by presenting the gods as beings absolutely good and
true, education goes on to present heroic nature, and also

1 See 383 c, and cf. Theaet. 176 A sq.
M. p. G

82 LECTURES ON PLATC/S REPUBLIC

human nature, in its highest and truest forms. It goes
on again to present reason in the guise of beauty, whether
beauty of harmony and rhythm, which is the work of
music in our sense of the word, or beauty of form, which
is the work of the plastic arts. The function of
povo-LKTi is to teach the soul to read the sensible world
around it ; it will attain its end if it teaches the soul
to discern and recognize in the worlds of art, of nature,
and of human life, the infinitely various forms of the
good circulating everywhere about it (402 c).

Throughout the discussion of education and throughout
the Republic, Plato combines with the exposition of what
he himself considers right, a great deal of criticism of
existing institutions. The criticism is so constant that
people are apt to miss the positive side of the discussion.
Plato s views are developed by antagonism. He finds
Homer, Hesiod, and other writers read and looked upon
with indiscriminate reverence by the Greeks without
regard to what is really noble in them, and he naturally
begins by criticizing their works. His criticism may
often strike us as pedantic, because the Greek poets are
not to us what they were to Plato ; we do not look upon
them seriously, as the Greeks did * ; to Plato they are
the food upon which the Greek mind is nurtured in youth.
Plato himself is aware that in his treatment of poetry he
seems to take away a great deal and put nothing in its
place. As if in apology for this he tells us (379 A) that
his business in this dialogue is not to write poems but to
found a state, and that accordingly he is only concerned
to lay down general principles for poets to observe.
It is a natural result of this that his criticism should
to a great extent seem merely negative.

1 See X. 598 D sq. and 606 E.

EDUCATION OF RULERS IN EARLY LIFE 83

The most obvious divisions into which the subject of
early education, as Plato treats it, falls, are juoim/cTJ (376 E
to 403 c) and yu^ao-UK?} (403 C to 41 2 B). Plato at first
takes this division in the popular sense, according to which
the former is the training of the soul and the latter of the
body; but he afterwards corrects this, explaining that
both act upon the soul, but by different means and
through different elements in the soul. In the section on
//ovo-tK?j he treats first of literature (376 E to 398 B), after
wards of music (398 B to 400 E) and the plastic arts (400 E
to 403 c). The treatment of literature resolves itself into
that of the matter and that of the form of literature
(376 E to 393 C and 392 C to 398 B). Here again the
ground of the division does not answer to what we should
understand by it. It is not what we should call literary
form or style that Plato is interested in when he deals
with what he calls Aef is. The prominent question still is,
Whatsis the soul to be taught ? and it is only because
certain forms of literature are calculated to affect the
soul in a particular way that the question of form comes
to be treated at all.

As regards matter, the primary subject of educational
literature is the divine nature as shown in stories of the
gods, from which Plato passes to the semi-divine nature
represented in the stories of heroes and divine men.
Parallel with this division of the subject runs a division
according to the moral principles which this literature
ought to inculcate, the virtues which Plato conceives should
be made the basis of human character. We begin with
the two fundamental virtues in which children should be
brought up, reverence for parents and brotherly feeling.
Then we pass (at the beginning of Book III) to the
virtues no longer of the growing child but of the grown

G 2

84 LECTURES ON PLATO S REPUBLIC

man, the two recognized cardinal virtues of courage
(avbptta) and sel f- cont roH q-Q) foocrfori \ and a third, added
by Plato, truth.

2. MOTSIKH: MYTHS AND THE BELIEFS
TAUGHT IN LITERATURE.

376 E to Plato enters upon the subject of /XOWIKI? with the
Book II startling assertion that education must begin with w.ha.t
Js_ false. He has in mind two senses in which a thing
may be false. All literature and all words are in
a sense false if they represent things otherwise than
they actually are or have happened ; in this sense
mythology must be untrue God can never have acted
in the human way in which he is represented as acting
in myths, and Plato tells us that the myths are all false
(383 D). He purposely abstained from rationalizing the
myths, as was customary about that time, and in the Pkae-
drus 1 he expressly rejects this practice as on the whole
an unprofitable thing. But no writer ever used myths
with greater effect than Plato, for the very reason that
he knew what he was about. In the Timaeus he says
that though he cannot tell us the exact truth about
the creation of the world, he will give us an account of
it in picture-language and in a myth made as like the
truth as possible 2 . When however he wished to speak
most in earnest about the nature of the, gods, he spoke
not in the language of myth but in that of philosophy.
Plato considered all anthropomorphic language about
God or the gods as mythological.

But there is another sense of the word false in which

22Q D. 2 Titnatus, 29 c.

EDUCATION OF RULERS IN EARLY LIFE 85

not all myths are false. That which is false in the
sense of being fiction, may be fiction well done or ill
done ; it is well done when it embodies a true idea of
that which it is intended to represent, and in this sense
it is then true. Myths which represented the divine
nature as doing things which we know it does not do,
would yet, if they represented as nearly as possible
what the divine nature really is, be true in this sense.
A myth which represented God as doing evil would
be false in both senses. Plato, then, would have em
ployed myths, knowing them to be untrue in form,
but as expressing substantial truth of idea.

Accordingly (after criticizing certain immoral myths,
chiefly those in which gods are represented as undutiful
to their parents) Plato lays down certain outlines or
principles of the way in which God is to be spoken
of (rvnoi 0eoAoyta?), which will determine what is a true
myth and what is a false myth. These principles occupy
the place of what we should call a system of dogma, so
far as that place is occupied at all in the thought of any
Greek writer. The first is that God is good and the
cause of good alone ; the second is that God is. true and
incapable of change or deceit. These two canons are
directed against certain false ideas of the popular
religion.

i. When Plato speaks (377 E to 380 c) of the goodness
of God, the prominent idea is that of beneficence or

goocL We_ draw a distinction between moral goodness or
being- good^and active goodness or doing good ; to Plato
there was no such distinction. He rejects therefore all
tales which assert that God dispenses evil to men or
injures them. We may find an analogous passage to
this in the chapter of Ezekiel where he declaims against

86 LECTURES ON PLATO S REPUBLIC

the saying, The fathers have eaten sour grapes,
and the children s teeth are set on edge. Against
popular opinions of that kind Plato urges the simple
logical deduction that, if God is good, he cannot be
the cause of anything not good. In the Timaeus^ we
are told that God made the world because he is good
and, being good, wills that everything should be as like
himself as it is possible to be, by being as good as
possible. Thus Plato is brought across the old problem
of the origin of the world. He admits that _the evil
things in human life outnumber the good ; whence comes
this evil ? He gives one of the commonest solutions
of the problem when he tells us we must either say of
human misfortunes that they are not the work of God,
or that they are not really evils, but pjjnjsnments_fo.r
which man is the better. We must not then say that
God is the cause of men s misery, and we must not
call men miserable (a#Atot) because they receive punish
ment when they deserve it 2 . This really means that
evil, in the sense of misfortune, is not evil if it is looked
at in the right way.

The same question is touched upon in various ways in
other dialogues 3 . We are told in a number of passages
that evil 4 in some sense or other is a necessary ingre
dient in human life and in this world as it is for man, in
the physical as well as in the moral world ; only in
the divine nature is evil wholly absent. How are

1 29 E.

2 Cf. Gorgias, 477 E, and the whole passage of which it forms a part.

3 See Theaet. 176 A ; Polit. 269 c sq. and 273 B sq. ; Lysts, 221 A-C ;
Crat. 403 E sq. ; Tim. 48 A and 86 B sq. ; and especially Laws, X. 903 B to
9050.

4 The word for evil (Trovrjpia") covers any kind of defect or blemish,
moral or otherwise.

EDUCATION OF RULERS IN EARLY LIFE 87

we to regard this necessary element in our life? In the
Laws Plato s answer comes to this : We only call things
evil because of our ignorance ; if we saw the whole
of things instead of a little fragment _close to ourselves.

4J -r -MUW &gt;.^MMB^^NMaaM&gt;MhMia^B^ftiMaM^a^;MMMmwa^MKnva j

we should see that everything works for good. The
conception in the Republic of the good as the cause
of all that is, and as the highest object of knowledge
and that which man is to try to see in the world,
involves the same idea. Understanding the world is
seeing the good that is in it ; to see the good in the
world is to see the reason of things. No man can
attain to this, but it is the ideal which is to guide
man s imperfect knowledge. Plato, then, has two
leading convictions on this subject. He holds that
the universe, so far as man has experience of it,Js
essentially imperfect, and has evil in it ; there is an
element in the world which resists the action of
reason or the will of God \ But equally strongly he
holds that, the more we understand things, the more
we shall see that evil has a reason for it and therefore
is not really evil. . He treats these as two ultimate facts,
and he nowhere attempts to reconcile them. It would
be difficult to say whether Plato does or does not
assume a principle of evil in the world co-ordinate
with the principle of good. On the whole the idea
of the beneficent work of divine reason is far the more
prominent in his writings.

2. The second principle laid down (380 D to end of
Book II) is the truth of God, and Plato takes this as
meaning two things : first, thatjGod cannot change ; and,
secondly, that God cannot lie, (a) Of change, he tells us,
there are two kinds : change from without produced by

1 See Timacus, 48 A and 53 B, and cf. 42 D.

LECTURES ON PLATO S REPUBLIC*

external agents, and change from within by the will of the
{person changing. First then, can we conceive that God
is liable to change owing to external agencies ? Plato
answers by enunciating a characteristic idea of Greek
philosophy, that liability to change imposed from without
is a sign of inherent vice or weakness. He takes the most
varied instances, living things, the human soul, works of
art, and applies to all the same principle, that in propor
tion as a thing is good of its kind it is less liable to be
changed by external influences. God then, being., the
best of things, is least liable to this. We also should
regard being easily affected by outside influences (in
a certain sense) as a sign of inferiority ; the stronger
a man is, the less do changes of climate, food, and the
like, affect him, and there is no such sign of inherent
moral force as being able to stand any number of
changes without being affected. This view contains
the germ of the idea which lies at the root of Stoicism,
that strength or virtue shows itself in the capacity
to remain unchanged by any conceivable circumstances.
As for the question whether God can change himself,
this is answered by the conception of divine perfection.
The only motive to voluntary self-change must be want,
and that motive cannot operate with God, for he is
from the first perfect and wanting nothing 1 .

The divine nature, then, is constant and unchanging.
This canon is directed mainly against the polymorphism
of Greek gods, and under it Plato forbids stories,
analogous to ghost stories, by which children were
frightened ; all these are in his view a degradation of
the divine being. A good deal of polytheistic mytho-

11 Cf. Aristotle, Eth. Nic. VII. xiv. 8, where change is connected with
iroi-ijp.a, imperfection.

EDUCATION OF RULERS IN EARLY LIFE 89

logy of the sort that he is speaking of 1 survives in
modern Europe in the byways of popular religion
and superstition. Throughout this passage Plato speaks
of God without hesitation as having form and shape
(using the words /.top^?} and etSos) quite in accordance
with the ordinary language of his day ; and he speaks
indifferently of God and of gods. The principle he
lays down is essentially a monotheistic principle, and
excludes the idea of God having shape at all, since what
has shape is of course liable to change ; but when he is
speaking of education, and of how religious ideas can be
presented to children s minds in an intelligible form, he
does not scruple to use the language of the popular
religion. In the Pkaedrus* he tells us by implication
that though we may think of God as having a body, this
conception of him is due to our imperfect way of thinking,
and is only our fiction about him.

(b) Next we come to the question whether God can
lie ; for in answer to what has just been said, it may
be objected that, though the gods do not change, they
may delude us and make us think they do ; they may,
without really changing themselves, appear to us in all
sorts of shapes. This brings us to the consideration of
lying (x/rev8eo-0cu) in general. Under this head Plato
includes all modes of producing false impressions, but
in the first place he describes falsehood in a peculiar
sense of the word, a falsehood in which no being, god
or man, would, if he knew it, acquiesce. For ^rcvdecrftu,
besides meaning: to make a false statement with intent to

deceive, may mean to be in a state of \l/evbos (falsehood)

1 381 E. Cf. Laws, XL 932 E sq., where laws against the pretence of
witchcraft are advocated.

2 246 c.

90 LECTURES ON PLATO S REPUBLIC

oneself, or to be the victim of an illusion. This is what
Plato calls the lie in the soul, which is what we might
call self-delusion ; and this, he tell us, gods and men
equally hate. It seems at first a very strong way of
speaking of ignorance. We can best understand it by
comparing a passage about ignorance in the Sophist 1 ,
where he says there are two forms of mental evil : vice,
which he compares to bodily disease, and ignorance, which
he compares to bodily deformity (ato-^o?). Ignorance, he
says, means that the soul, having an impulse towards the
truth, thinks beside the mark/ like a man who cannot
guide the motions of his limbs as he wishes ; and this
deformity he also describes as want of proportion*
(a{jLTpta). So in Book VI of the Repttblic he describes
the opposite of this deformity as proportion (e/xjuerpta)
of the soul 2 . He thinks of the soul as being either
proportioned or disproportioned so as to be well or ill
adapted to take hold of truth, just as a hand may be
well or ill adapted for taking hold of things. We mean
by ignorance simply want of information, and this of
course is a part of what Plato means by ignorance ; but
the radical sense of it with him is something far more
important than this ; it is being out of harmony with
the facts of the world ; and we may compare Plato s
language about it with the way in which Carlyle con
stantly speaks of incapacity to recognize the * fact, or
with the phrase in the second Epistle to the Thessalonians,
1 God shall send them strong delusion, that they should
believe a lie. By truth as a quality attributed to human
character, Plato means being, so to say, in a true state,
a state which answers to the facts or to the order of the
world ; ignorance, in its deeper sense as the opposite of

1 228 c sq. 2 486 D.

EDUCATION OF RULERS IN EARLY LIFE 91

this, is, he tell us, a thing that everybody abhors ; for
if it were put to any one, Do you wish to believe lies ?
he would refuse with horror ; it is a form of madness,
madness being an extreme and permanent form of
believing lies.

This sense of lying is only mentioned here to be set
aside ; God cannot be conceived of as creating illusion
in us because he is the victim of illusion himself. Can
he then be conceived of as deluding us by telling a lie or
by presenting to us deceiving circumstances ? We must
first ask what circumstances there are under which
lying is not detestable. There are cases in which it has
a remedial use, like a medicine, as in dealing with mad
people; and there is the analogous case of war, in
which it is assumed that lying is justifiable. Like every
remedy it is in itself an evil, but in such cases it is the
lesser of two evils. It is sometimes justifiable also on
the ground of ignorance. When we do not know all the
truth, we may represent it as nearly as we can, knowing
that our representation is partly false. But none of these
motives can apply to God ; for he has no enemies to fear,
and no emergencies like that of dealing with a madman
to meet ; and he is omniscient. The conclusion is there
fore that God is perfectly simple and true both in deed
and in word ; he neither changes nor deceives. (The
spoken lie is here said to be a sort of imitation of the
affection of the soul ; it is an image of later birth. The
phrase may seem to suggest that the man who tells
the lie has the lie in the soul first and is himself
deluded, but it merely means that the spoken lie is the
expression of a previously conceived false thought, not
that the liar is ignorant of its falsehood.)

The passage sometimes gives people an uncomfortable

92 LECTURES ON PLATO S REPUBLIC*

feeling that Plato considers deliberate lying not so bad
as being ignorant, but the question of moral guilt is not
raised at all in the comparison between them. Plato
simply says that a state of delusion is a state everybody
would naturally hate to be in ; he implies that most
people, if they had the choice, would rather tell a lie
than be under some complete delusion about some very
important truth ; and he is probably right ; how the
two compare in moral worth is a further question, on
which he says nothing 1 . In what he does say as to
the morality of deceiving others, he makes it a question
of motive and of the object to be obtained. If the good
to be obtained by a falsehood is greater than the harm
done, and is not to be obtained in any other way, then
the lie does not matter. In accordance with this principle
Plato, later on, justifies the maintenance among the
people of a belief known by the rulers to be false, which
he says will conduce to patriotism among those who are
not enlightened enough to appreciate the real reason for
it 2 . Such passages show us that in one direction at any
rate, where we should see a very great danger in the
mere fact of saying what was untrue, Plato did not see
it. Nevertheless, whenever he thinks lying justifiable it
is as a compromise, a concession to human weakness.
It implies the presence of an evil which you are too
weak to deal with in any other way. The point in
which people really differ about this is as to where
the necessity for saying what is not true begins. The

1 [The conception of the lie in the soul is not returned to, but later
on Plato closely associates immorality and low aims in life with illusion
(see especially IX. 585 E sq.), and it is a fair interpretation of him to say
that to have the lie in the soul in the fullest degree would be to be
completely immoral. ED.]

2 See 414 B sq.

EDUCATION OF RULERS IN EARLY LIFE 93

greater a man is the less he finds the necessity for
lying ; the possibility of telling the truth under diffi
cult circumstances is one of the greatest tests of strong
character.

There can be no doubt that telling the truth was
not a national virtue of the Greeks, and though in the
passage which shortly follows 1 what Plato says about
it is strict and emphatic, we see here that he is more
concerned about the being in a state of truth than about
the telling of the truth-. A connecting link between
the idea of truth as being in a true state and that of

truthfulness in our sense, may be found in a quality to
which Aristotle gives the name of truth 3 . This is not
truth-telling in general but being true to yourself in what
you say, being what you profess to be and professing to
be what you are. Truth in this sense seems to have
struck the Greeks as more important than what we call
truthfulness. The sense of its importance goes along
with the hatred of versatility and of want of personality
which comes out so strongly in the Republic*. We know
that some at any rate of the Greek peoples were very
much inclined to a sort of aimless versatility ; and no
doubt it was this fact that led Plato to insist upon this
matter so strongly. This too leads him to make it one
of the first principles to be observed about the divine

1 389 B tO D.

2 [Cf. VI. 485 c, where the philosophic nature is said to be truthful in
every way, and a curious motive for truthfulness is given ; the philosopher
is passionately desirous himself to attain the truth, and lying, it appears,
will be odious to him, by a sort of association of ideas, because they
remind him of false belief which he wishes himself to be free from. Ed.]

3 In the list of virtues, Eth. Nic. II. vii. 12. When he discusses this
quality later, ibid. IV. 7, he says it has no name, but the man who
possesses it fv Xojw at kv (Bi&lt;y aXrjQtvei, rca rfv eiv TOIOVTOS flvai.

* See especially 394 E sqq.

94 LECTURES ON PLATO S REPUBLIC

nature, that it is simple and least of all things capable
of departing from its own form 1 (380 D).
III. A to At the beginning of Book III we pass from the con-

QQ2 C*

sideration of God himself, or the gods themselves, to
that of the divine nature as it appears fused with human
nature ; for most of the myths criticized and appealed
to are not about the gods, but about semi-divine beings
fiaifjioves) and heroes, and the rest are myths in which
(as in the story of Zeus and Sarpedon) gods are affected
by human emotions with regard to men ; we are thus
moving in the borderland between gods and men. Inci
dentally this gives Plato the opportunity both to expound
positively what he conceives to be the highest moral
nature, and also to criticize negatively the current con
ceptions about it, suggesting what poets ought to say
by examples of what they ought not to say. (This is
a double process going on all through the Republic y and
often the polemical side seems uppermost.) At the same
time we pass from the foundation of education, which is
to be laid in the feeling of reverence to gods and to
pareqtsjmd in brotherly feeling, to the specific virtues
of courage, truthfulness, and self-control. These virtues
are to be inculcated by setting before the soul heroic
types of them, just as in the preceding passage the more
ultimate principles of morality, goodness and unchange-
ableness, were presented to the soul in stories about the
divine nature. Further, whereas in the last part of
Book II Plato is speaking mainly of the education of
children, in the beginning of Book III it is clearly young
men and not children that he has chiefly in mind. It is
necessary to look at this part of the Republic from all

1 For further treatment of Plato s attitude towards truth, see Section
VI, page 135.

EDUCATION OF RULERS IN EARLY LIFE 95

these points of view in order to see the full scope of it
It is partly concerned with a system of education, partly
with the exposition of moral principles, partly with
criticism.

Courage is treated of first (386 A to 389 B). There
are different accounts of the virtues in different parts of
the Republic^ and if we want to form a true estimate
of Plato s ideas about any virtue we must put all the
passages about it together. So we shall have to return
to courage later 1 . Here, as in other cases, we start with
the popular Greek conception of courage as meaning-
fearlessness of death ; to the Greek mind (as Aristotle
tells us) death is the typically terrible thing (SetvoV),
and the bravest man is he who is not afraid to die.
Afterwards the conception of courage, while still of
course including this, is widened so as to include all
holding out against anything terrible, anything from
which human nature is wont to shrink. The primary
sense of courage leads Plato here to make some remarks
about the nature of death and the life of the soul after
death. He says that a good man at any rate has no
cause to think death terrible. It follows that he will
not think it terrible for his friends who are good, and,
both for this reason and because of all men the good
man is most independent, he will bear the loss of friends
better than other men. As for the terrible pictures
that are drawn of the world below, though they are
poetically effective and stimulate the imagination and
the emotions, they are not true and they do no good.
It is to be noticed how Plato always associates the truth
of a belief with its expediency ; he did not think they

1 Cf. IV. 429 A to 430 c, 441 E to 442 c; VI. 486 A sq., 503 B to E ;
and with the last compare VII. 535 B.

96 LECTURES ON PLATO S REPUBLIC*

were one and the same thing, but they were connected
in his mind 1 .

We pass almost imperceptibly from courage, which has
been expanded to include not only fearlessness of death
for oneself but fearlessness of death for one s friends, to
endurance (/caprepta), the passive side of courage ; and here
Plato has occasion to criticize the extravagant expressions
of grief that appear in Homer, condemning them the more
severely since they are put into the mouths of men and
even of heroes. Is the picture of a hero rolling on the
ground with grief really a worthy example? From
endurance in the sense of control of grief we pass to con
trol of excessive feeling in general. Endurance is thus
the meeting-point of courage and of temperance or self-
control (&lt;ra)(f)po(rvi ri). It is very characteristic of Plato to
be perpetually showing, as he does in this passage, points
of connexion between things apparently very different ;
his conceptions are never at rest in his hands, but are
continually passing into one another. Throughout the
treatment of these virtues we find the characteristic Greek
idea that excess, whether in grief, or in laughter, or in
appetite, or in any passion or emotion, is intrinsically bad.
We have to remember that dignity was not a strong
point of Greek character. The Greeks, or some sections
of the Greek race, were very liable to violent emotions ; and
hence it was that the Greek moral philosophers insisted
on control of emotion as they did. The Greeks had a sort
of natural want of self-respect and a tendency to forget
themselves, which particularly struck the Romans as
unworthy. If we do not bear this in mind, the treatment
of grief in this passage will appear hard and stoical, and
the mention of laughter absurd. The basis of Plato s

1 391 E.

EDUCATION OF RULERS IN EARLY LIFE 97

view is not that it is bad to feel, but that excess of emotion
reacts upon the character and weakens it 1 .

Between the passages on courage and on self-control
comes a short passage on truthfulness (389 B to D). This
is here considered as a part of obedience, and in re
ference to recognition of authority in general. It is
assumed that lying is hateful in itself unless justified by
circumstances, and the circumstances which justify lying
can only, Plato says, apply to persons in authority. A
doctor may deceive his patient for his patient s benefit,
and the rulers may deceive for the public good. To all
others truthfulness is a principle without exception. For
the citizen to tell a lie to those in authority is like a man s
telling a lie to his doctor.

This leads up to self-control or temperance (a-^pocrvvrj) ^
the essence of which is obedience to authority, whether
to a ruler, or to the higher self within oneself (389 D to
393 A). Plato treats of self-control, first as obedience
to^ persons in authority, secondly as the control of the
appetites (and especially as to the restraint of lust and of
avarice, which latter is constantly associated with bodily
appetites in the Republic?) thirdly as the control of wanton-

A i **. / 4 ^*\

1 Cf. X. 604 A sq., especially 604 c.

3 [Cf. IV. 430 E to 432 A and 442 c. Temperance is the word
generally used in translations. Self-control covers the ground better,
but its defect as a translation is that it suggests effort and constraint,
whereas a man is not a6jfyp&lt;uv in Plato s or in Aristotle s sense, unless his
mastery of his passions and impulses is so easy and assured that there is
no sense of constraint about it. Aristotle expressly contrasts aca&lt;ppoavi&gt;Tj
with fyitpaTda, the forcible restraint of oneself; and in Rep. IV. 430 E
to 432 A the same distinction is implied (acatypoavvr) being the harmony
and agreement of the different elements in the soul). In addition to the
senses of acotypoavvr) mentioned above, one of its commonest senses in
Greek is that of sanity. 2ca/&gt;ocvi/ was also used, almost as a party name,
to describe the upholders of aristocracy or of a very much limited de
mocracy. ED.]

N.P. H

98 LECTURES ON PLATO S * REPUBLIC

ness, insolence, or pride (vfipis), which is illustrated by
the stories of Achilles. The meaning of a-atypovvvT] is
best understood by its opposite, tf/3/ns, which is the general
spirit of setting oneself up against what is higher than
oneself, whether by insubordination to constituted autho
rity and divine law, or by the rebellion of the appetites
against the law of reason. Thus this quality in some
degree includes what we call humility. It is often said
that the virtue of humility is not recognized in the Greek
moral code, but the man who was o-u&gt;(l&gt;pu&gt;v in regard to
the gods would be the humble man, and the vfipia-TLKos is
the proud man in the language of the Bible. The mis
representations of the divine and heroic nature which
are incidentally criticized throughout this passage are
peculiarly Greek, and could easily be compared and con
trasted with the misrepresentations of the divine nature
which are criticized by the Hebrew prophets. The
human weaknesses which the Jews attributed to their God
are very different from those that appear here. The
rnoftt notable are je.a]pusy and anger, resulting in unjust
revenge and the like ; as the essence of the divine nature
in the Old Testament is righteousness or justice, so the
human weakness attributed to God is injustice.

Now that we have laid down certain principles as to
the true nature of gods, demi-gods, and the world after
death, it would remain, Plato says (392 A to c), to lay
down principles as to human nature and how it should
be represented in literature if it is not to be falsified. As
in regard to the divine nature there are principles by the
violation of which tales about the gods are made false
in the most serious sense, so, as to human nature and
human life, there are certain true principles which popular
literature and popular ideas commonly violate. We are

EDUCATION OF RULERS IN EARLY LIFE 99

constantly told that the unjust are happy and the just
miserable, and this goes to the root of our beliefs about
human life. Is it true? This question cannot be an
swered yet, he tells us ; because it is really the question
which the Republic as a whole is designed to answer.
If we eventually find that this is not the true view of
human life, that justice is not really loss and injustice
not really gain, then, looking back at this question, we
shall be able to say that these popular representations
of human life are misrepresentations. At present we
can only say it by anticipation.

3. MoTSIKH: THE ART OF LITERATURE.

Plato has so far considered the matter of literature, or 392 c to
the question what things are to be said. The next 39
question he asks is, how these things are to be said (Aefts-),
or, What is to be the form of literature ? In the transition
to this question we really pass to the consideration of Art,
for the principles which Plato lays down about literature
are carried on in his treatment of the whole of the rest of
uoutTi/oj. It is a fair interpretation of his procedure to say
that, regarding education as a gradual nourishment i&gt;fjhe
soul in its various stages, he passes here to a stage in
which the artistic sense is distinctly developed, and there
fore has to be educated rightly or wrongly. As long as
education is confined either to teaching young children
3r to inculcating definite and simple moral qualities, the
irtistic sense is not called into play, and it scarcely matters
n what form you represent truth. But at a certain stage
.his question does become important, because the soul
:hat is being educated becomes susceptible to artistic
brax proper. From this point onwards the discussion

H 2

loo LECTURES ON PLATO S REPUBLIC

of fjiova-LKri has to do with this stage in the soul s growth ;
throughout the question of form, whether in literature
or music or the plastic arts, is the principal one con
sidered, and the susceptibility to form is being taken
account of as the chief thing requiring nurture for the
present.

We begin with the treatment of form in literature.
First, the idea of imitation (ju /wjo-is) is explained in its
application to literature" (393 c to 394 c). Then the
educational requirements of a literature, which should
really .develop the sort of character which is worth
developing, are explained (394 C to 396" B). Next, the
and bad in literature are distinguished in the liq;ht

~~m**mm i of - -- &lt;=&gt;

______ _..

of the., j:esults,,t.hus. .attained (396 B to 397 c). Lastly,
a judgment is passed on poetry (397 c to 398 B). It is
above all necessary to realize first what is the question
that Plato has in his mind. The first impression
made is that he is discussing a purely literary or aesthetic
question, and we naturally suppose that he will try to
make out what form of poetry epic, lyric, dramatic, &c.
is best for education. But he does not do this at all;
the answer to the question, What is good poetry? is given
in terms of ethical not of literary criticism. The question
of form in literature becomes the question, Are the men
whom we are training to be imitative (pipqrtfcoi), and, if so,
imitative of what ?

First, then, we must consider Plato s conception of
imitation. The word lumens is used in the Republic in
two ways, in a general and in a specific sense. In its
more general sense we have already seen it applied to
literature ; poets were blamed for making bad copies
of the gods 1 , and the use of myths was said to be that

1 377 E and 388 c.

EDUCATION OF RULERS IN EARLY LIFE 101

they should givejregresentations of gods and heroes which
were as. fajias.. passible like them. In this more general
sense of the word imitation/ how does poetry imitate ?
One must dismiss from one s mind here the question
whether a poet or artist imitates nature, or whether he
originates or creates. When Plato talks of the poet as
imitating, in this general sense of the word, he is merely
thinking of the fact that the poet represents things, that
words are to the poet, what colour is to the painter,
a medium through which he represents certain objects or
events. The use of the word imitation in this wide sense
was familiar to the Greeks, and its import was to put the
function of the poet alongside that of other artists.
Representation is the best word for /WJUHJO-IS in this sense.
It is important here again to remember that Plato
regards,he human snul as essentially an imitative thing,
a thing .which naturally and instinctively makes itself
like to its surroundings. When we read books or see
plays or hear stories, if we are interested we do to a certain
extent make ourselves like the characters in whom we
are interested. Accordingly, when Plato is talking of
imitation we must think of the audience quite as much
as of the dramatic poet or actor ; the spectator enters
into the situation and, so far as he does so, is an imitator
(fAt^rjnjs). If this were not so in Plato s view, literature
would not have such enormous importance in his eyes.
Men are naturally imitative mtiuwrtKof). and literature is

one of the things that call out this tendency. Now all
imitation tends to become the real thing ; by simu
lating a thing one catches something of the reality ; one
imitates the thing one is interested in, and one gradually
becomes the thing one imitates. With this conception
of the effect of literature in his mind, Plato now asks

102 LECTURES ON PLATO S REPUBLIC

what is the best literature for drawing out what is best in
human nature ; and that is the ultimate question before
him throughout this discussion.

The discussion, however, is first raised with regard to
the value of literature which is imitative in a specific
sense; for while all literature is imitative, one kind of
literature differs from another in manner and degree
of imitation, that is to say, in the extent to which it
brings before us the actual circumstances described, or,
as we should now say, in the degree to which it is
realistic. Here accordingly imitation is used not in the
generic sense, but in an emphatic sense to describe that
sort of literature which imitates most, or is most realistic.
The poet, Plato says, either employs narrative, that is,
simply tells the story, or he employs imitation, or he
does both. By imitation he here means impersonation
the poet puts himself as much as he can into the actual
position of the person described. The drama is the form
of literature in which this is done throughout ; epic poetry
employs both kinds of writing ; certain sorts of choric
and lyric poetry employ only narrative.

We must not suppose that, because this distinction
answers to a distinction of literary form, Plato rests what
he has got to say on grounds of literary form. Having
distinguished these three kinds of literature, he at once
tells us that the question is not (at present, at any rate J )
whether we are to have the drama, but whether the men
who are eventually to be guardians of the state are to
be imitators. Now if the question in his mind were
confined to mere forms of literature, this would mean that
he was going to consider whether they should be actors

[ Notice the phrase used in this connexion, we must go whithersoever
the argument, like a wind, bears us (394 D).

EDUCATION OF RULERS IN EARLY LIFE 103

or not ; but what he actually discusses is not so much
whether they are to be imitative as of what they are to
be imitative ; what characters they are to impersonate
with what characters, that is, they are, so far as imagina
tion enables them, to identify themselves 1 . So the real
question in his mind is not, as he first makes it appear,
whether the right form of literature is dramatic or epic
or lyric (that is quite a subordinate matter, and in the
conclusion of the argument here nothing is decided about
it), but what sort of human nature is worth imitating in
literature. And that means (for we are here using
imitation in the narrower sense), What sort of human
nature ought to be most realistically represented, or
embodied in that particular way which most stimulates
imagination ? Ought the poet, he asks, to represent as
realistically as he can, with all the force of his genius,
anything and everything that can be made impressive
and exciting, or ought the poet, regarded as the servant
of the state, to make a selection and throw all his force
into representing realistically what is ^reat and good in
human nature ? To Plato there can be only one answer.
O n ly"that nTTiuman nature which is worth making part
of one s own character is worth artistic imitation of this

intense or realistic kind. If the type of the greatest man
waslhe man wTiocould put himself indiscriminately into
the greatest number of situations or characters, then the
greatest poet would also be such a man. But human
nature, Plato tells us, is so cut up into little bits that
one man can neither imitate nor practise well more than
one sort of life. Since, then, what a man imitates settles
into a sort of second nature with him, he must discrimi
nate in what he imitates. The good writer will only

1 This is clear in 395 c sq.

104 LECTURES ON PLATO S &lt; REPUBLIC

I lose his own personality in some other worthy of himself;
and what applies to the writer applies also to the spectator
or the reader.

This being the real question at issue, Plato gives no
explicit answer to the question of the best form of litera
ture. He has left it an entirely open question how the
great poet is to fulfil the demands here made of him ; he
has, he says, only to lay down outlines for the guidance
of the poet. He demands of poets first that they shall
be, in a sense, servants of the community ; for otherwise
there is no place for them in the community. He then
says to them, You are men with the genius to represent
life in a vivid way, in a way that stimulates imagination ;
exercise this faculty upon those things which are really
worth imitating. He believes that men are extremely
sjusce.pti.hJe to the influence of literature, and that its
power to affect character is very great. Accordingly, he
says, not that good literature is that which moralizes (in
our depreciatory sense of the word), but that it is that
which represents human nature in such a way as to
stimulate what is best in man. There are two sorts of
poets, he says. The bad poet, though he may be a man
of great genius, will throw himself into any and every
character, and will thereby become extremely popular,
especially with children and slaves. The poet with
a proper sense of what is suitable (p&pios avrjp, 396 C),
when he has to treat of the actions or speeches of * good
men (a phrase which meant something more with the
Greeks than it does with us), will throw himself as much
as possible into them and will represent them dramatically ;
when he meets with the weaknesses, imperfections, and
failures of a great character he will give them less space ;
and upon quite unworthy characters and objects on

EDUCATION OF RULERS IN EARLY LIFE 105

madness or disease, for example, or on any condition in
which man falls conspicuously below himself he will
spend himself least of all, unless it be in a humorous
way (this qualification leaves a considerable door of
escape open, and gives a place for comedy). As to what
form of literature would best answer these requirements
no clue is given us ; that is left to the poet.

Plato is writing with direct reference to certain con
temporary facts and to contemporary poets, though we
have not the key to his allusions. Probably all the
instances that he takes of the abuse of imitative literature
were innovations that had come in during his time. He
describes certain new tendencies in tragedy (395 D sq.) ;
probably scores of dramatists were altering the character
of tragedy in the same direction as Euripides, but with
much less power l . As to comedy (396 A sq.), he refers to
horseplay on the stage, and to certain, then novel, ways of
producing broad effects, which struck him, let us say, as a
coach and horses on the stage might strike a modern critic.
The passage about imitating the neighing of horses, the
bellowing of bulls, and so on probably refers to some form
of dithyrambic poetry, perhaps parallel to the modern
pantomime 2 . From these passages, and from Book X,
and from many similar passages in the Laws, it is clear
that Plato felt strongly that Greek literature and music
were declining ; literature, he thought, was becoming a
mere provider of stimulants to a rather morbid imagina
tion. The kind of aimless variation and want of principle
which he describes in contemporary art, is the count er-

1 [Nettleship here apparently referred to Arist. Poetics, 1460 B, 34 sq.,
where Sophocles is reported to have said that he represented men as they
should be and that Euripides represented them as they actually were.]

2 Ct. Z.air-5, II. 669 c sq., and Aristophanes, Plutus, 290.

io6 LECTURES ON PLATO S REPUBLIC

part of what, in regard to the more serious matters of
life, he describes in the character of the democratic man l .

Plato s principle is a more serious principle than most
people care to apply to literature, and his attitude strikes
us as austere and despotic, not only because of the limita
tions of his view, but still more because he takes the
matter more gravely than we do. If we would really
put ourselves in an analogous position to Plato s, we must
not think only of drama or of romance, but of religious
literature, the Bible and all that takes its start from
the Bible. We shall then recognize the sort of problem
which Plato has before him in this discussion of litera
ture. And if we do take literature in a serious sense, and
see in it the greatest educational power in society, the
question how it should be employed becomes one which
must be put, in considering how society could be
made fundamentally better. But to understand not
merely the serious spirit in which Plato regards litera
ture but his earnestness about the particular points to
which he directs attention, we must further remember
the inherent tendency of many Greek peoples to
be imitative men, always posing instead of being
themselves.

If we take the bare principle which Plato lays down,
there is nothing in it hostile to any great literature or
art (though any high and exacting standard may be said
to be hostile to literature and art at their ordinary level),
nor is there any reason why Plato s requirements should
limit the genius of the great poet. In what particular
way literature may be made to conform to the principle
is another question, and one so difficult that, with the
exception of certain religious bodies, no state or society

1 VIII. 561 CtOE.

EDUCATION OF RULERS IN EARLY LIFE 107

has tried to find a practical answer to it. But the great
poets of the world have on the whole, except in comedy,
dealt with what is great in human nature. They have
of course differed in their conceptions of what is the
great and the really beautiful in human nature ; and
there never can be one definite and final answer to the
question in what way this principle can be best applied.
In one respect most thoughtful people now would dis
agree with the spirit in which Plato seems to apply his
own principle ; and in one respect the modern mind, in
its highest view of art, differs widely from the Greek
mind ; it is, that on the whole it looks for what is great
and what is beautiful over a much wider range. But,
mutatis mutandis, there is just the same question in the
minds of men now as to the limits in art between the
great and the small, the beautiful and the ugly. We
should think it absurd for the state, certainly for the
British Parliament, to lay down canons of art, but that
does not prevent us from having canons. The great
artists of the world have, though of course without
telling us their theory or perhaps formulating it at all to
themselves, recognized such canons, and as to those
canons we can see that there has been substantial agree
ment among them. In one point, and that the main
point, they have acted upon Plato s principle ; all the
great artists and poets are ideal ; that which interests
them most is something above the ordinary level of
human life. On the other hand, in one way, no poet has
ever come up to Plato s requirements, for none has ever
deliberately set himself to be the educator of the society
he lived in. Yet if we take a very great poet like Dante,
however little he may himself have contemplated the
effect he produced, there can be no doubt of the strength

io8 LECTURES ON PLATO S REPUBLIC

of his influence in forming the mind of generations
after him.

4. MOTSIKH: Music AND THE ARTS GENERALLY.

3980 to Winding up his treatment of literature by describing
how the great dramatic genius, who can imitate every
thing, will be bowed out of the reformed state, Plato
goes on to deal with music proper upon the same prin
ciple that he has applied to literature, namely, that it
must be criticized, and approved or condemned, as an
influence for good or evil upon character.

What is the ground for this principle for we here pass
to something different from the direct representation of
human action and character which has so far been under
consideration ? It is that music and every art expresses

character (riOos 1 ) in the soul of the man who produces It,
and in the soul of the man to whom it appeals. One art
differs from another in the medium that it uses, but in

all there is character, good or bad (et^eta or
No art, therefore, can help being educational ; it affects
character because it expresses character. This is a general
principle which can still be held without committing us
to saying in what particular way music or any art affects
character. You cannot put music into words, or pictures
into words, and the attempt to do so has even been
harmful ; each art uses its own medium, and has its own
laws ; all we can say is that in all the forms of art soul
speaks to soul ; each art has its own form of sense, and
through sense soul comes in contact with soul.

In his treatment of music (398 c to 400 E), Plato must
have seemed even to his contemporaries still more

1 400 E. T H0os does not mean a moral, it means character.

EDUCATION OF RULERS IN EARLY LIFE 109

conservative and puritanical than in his treatment of
literature. He not only requires the musician to recog
nize that he has a work to do in the state ; he says
definitely which of the modes or harmonies of Greek
music are to be allowed (namely, the Dorian and the
Phrygian), and forbids the use of any others ; among
musical instruments he allows only the lyre and the
cithara, and (for herdsmen in the country) the Pan-pipes
((rupiy), forbidding the use of all instruments upon which
more complex effects could be produced, and of the flute ;
he limits rhythm, though not so definitely, to a few simple
forms, rhythms which will be suitable to an orderly and
brave man ; and finally he insists that music is to be
subordinate to the words it accompanies, that rhythm
and harmony must be adapted to the words and not
the words to them. As he remarks, we have now begun
the purgation of the luxurious city, eliminating all those
elements of civilization which are not really valuable, but
are simple luxuries *.

It is not difficult to see the leading idea which runs

through all Plato s criticisms of the music and of the
artistic and literary work of his time. It is that of
simplicity as opposed to complexity. There is a right
and a wrong sense in which it may be said that art
should be simple. Plato s objections to mere indis
criminate imitation of human life arise from the feeling
that such indiscnminateness implies that no principle of
good or bad in human life is recognized ; his saying that
men ought to be simple, not multiform 2 , is the expres
sion of his demand that some principle should be recog-

1 For more detailed treatment of the passage on music see note at end
of this subsection.

2 397 E (with reference to music).

no LECTURES ON PLATO S REPUBLIC

nized. So when he comes to music, he objects to those
kinds of music which involve every variety of rhythm,
scale and the like, evidently seeing in them the same vice
which produces in literature the indiscriminate imitation
of anything interesting (397 B, c). In this Plato has
probably confused two ideas of simplicity. In one sense
every great work of art is simple ; it is the working out,
in however complicated a manner, of certain simple and
great ideas. But there is another sense in which art can
be simple, and in which we often speak of early art as
being distinguished by simplicity. It is simple in the
sense that it carries its meaning on its face ; we can easily
perceive the idea it is intended to embody. There is
comparatively little put into an early picture ; the
attitudes and gestures in it express very obviously what
they are intended to express. So with a very simple
tune, we easily catch the principle on which it is put
together. Early poetry, too, is simple ; we at once take
in the situation. In the same way we speak of simple
characters ; meaning that one easily understands their
acts, and sees what are their feelings and principles. In
contrast to this we say that the more civilization we have,
the more complex and involved does human life become.
Our art might appear confused to an early artist, but the
work of a great artist of later times is not really confused ;
he has his own distinct and dominating idea as well as
the earlier artist, only it is harder to express and harder
to interpret. So with character ; simplicity in the
important sense does not vanish from life as time goes
on ; great characters preserve their concentration and
unity of purpose ; but it becomes harder to interpret
them. Doubtless also in later times every great work of
art is labyrinthine and we have to find the clue to it ; but

EDUCATION OF RULERS IN EARLY LIFE in

there is a great difference between complexity in the sense
of having a great number of elements combined in a
harmony which it is hard to analyze, and complexity
in the sense of confusion and absence of principle. The
great question about a work of art is whether there is
a clue to it, whether there is a unity in it or not.

It is obvious that Plato thought that the Athenians
were losing their simplicity in every direction. Not that
he wanted them to go back to the simplicity of primitive
times. What he wanted was that there should be reality
in them ; that they should not become, as they seemed
to him to be becoming, a nation of actors, but should
assume genuine characters. Athens, as he describes it to
us, is becoming like a theatre 1 . The arts, too, are afflicted
with the same disease, and foster it ; they are complicated
in the sense of being confused ; they lack principle, and
admit everything without discrimination. The under
lying idea is true enough ; great art, like great character,
is doubtless simple in the sense of being harmonious.
But we feel that in working out his idea Plato is led to
advocate things which are really retrograde, things which
would have the effect of arresting the development of art
and of civilization generally ; at moments indeed he
appears to be doing away with art altogether. This is
because he has not been true to his own principles, but
has allowed his view to be narrowed by fixing his atten
tion too much omcertain particular facts which he saw or
thought he saw close to him. We find the same thing
later on in his treatment of property and the family.
Thus, while there is nothing in his principles which is
derogatory to art or which need limit its scope, yet in his
particular applications of them he does limit it. To us,

1 See again VIII. 561 c to E.

ii2 LECTURES ON PLATO % S REPUBLIC

who are interested first in his principles, he says, Let all
art express something, and let it be something worth
expressing ; do not let it be meaningless, or cater simply
to the morbid fancies of a mob and to its desire for
excitement. But on the other hand it probably seemed
to his contemporaries that he was setting aside a great
part of the most valuable productions of the age. We
find something of the same combination in Mr. Ruskin.

In a very condensed passage (400 E to 402 c) Plato
proceeds to extend his conception of the educational
power of art to the whole field of art. Of the arts which
he now enumerates he makes no detailed criticism.
Accordingly we here pass entirely from the polemical
side of his writing to his positive theory of the ethical
effect of art ; this, so far from reducing the function of
art to a minimum, is at once as liberal, and as high in
the aim that it sets, as anything that could be said
on the subject. It really contains the pith of what there
is to be said about it.

He first tells us that in painting and sculpture, in
weaving, embroidery, the making of pottery and furniture,
in architecture, and beyond these in the whole of organic
nature, in fact wherever there is sensible form, there is
the capacity for beauty or ugliness, and that beauty or
ugliness both of figure and of sound is associated with
what is beautiful or ugly in character. He goes on to
describe the effect that might be produced upon the soul
if, as it grew up, it was surrounded by an atmosphere of
beauty. We must not suppose that he thinks the world
can be reformed by art alone, but he does ascribe to it
a function, among other factors in human life, more
important than perhaps any other philosopher has
ascribed to it.

EDUCATION OF RULERS IN EARLY LIFE 113

What was it that he thought art could do ? Phrases
about the moral influence of art are apt to make us
think of art that expressly illustrates moral principles, of
didactic poetry or pictures ; but there is no idea of this
here. Throughout his treatment of education, here and
further on, there is present the general idea of the soul as
having certain powers or tendencies which may be called
out (not created) by its environment. Among the media
through which these tendencies may be brought out are
two most important ones, seeing and hearing, through
which the soul conies in contact with the exterior world.
It is through them, in the first instance, that the
soul acquires knowledge, or in other words is brought
into conformity with the truth of the world outside it.
Amongst other aspects of that truth, the soul is through
eye and ear brought into contact with the beauty of the
world. For in Plato s mind the world as a whole is
beautiful. There is reason in the world, which makes
it intelligible, and the reason in the world shows itself
also in the aspect of beauty. So in the Timaeus J , Plato
says that the great value of sight and hearing is that
through them the soul may understand the visible and
audible rhythm and harmony of the world ; the great
type of rhythm and harmony was the movements of the
stars ; in them the Greeks saw, so to say, the harmonious
movement of reason. The function of the artist, then, is
:o show us the beauty of the world. We must, says
Plato (401 c), look for craftsmen who have the genius to
:rack out beauty and grace wherever they are to be found ;
hey are to show it to those who have not the eye to see
t or the ear to hear it in the world for themselves. He
egards rhythm as rational movement ; it is movement

1 47 A to E.

N. P.

H4 LECTURES ON PLATO S REPUBLIC*

arranged upon a certain principle ; beautiful form, simi
larly, is form arranged upon a certain principle. In all
products of art (400 D sq.) there is goodness or badness
of rhythm (evpvOnta and dp/wfyua) or of harmony (evap-
jmoorla and cbap/nocma) or of form (tvayi^ovvvTr] and
ao-xTj^oo-wT)), and right rhythm or right form is akin on
the one hand to the reason, the rhythm and harmony,
which is to be traced in the world as a whole, and akin
on the other hand to what is right and rational in
human character. This is the real relation between art
and character or morality *.

In what definite way, then, is the character affected
by artistic surroundings? Plato gives two descriptions
of the way in which they influence the soul ; one de-
cribes what we should distinguish as the more moraj,
and the other what we should distinguish as the more
intellectual influence of art, but they are not different
in his view. He tells us (401 D) that the soul appro
priates to itself the characteristics of rhythm &gt; harmony,
and shapeliness. He would no doubt say that it shows
this in the actual movements of the body, in speech
and gesture and bearing, for there are certain modes
of movement which are expressive of moral or spiritual
qualities L , and the fact that they are recognized as thus
expressive shows that there is an association between
the sense of rhythm and of form and the sense of what is
right in character. But his view of the influence of art
is best summed up in the metaphor of learning to read

1 For the association in Plato of the highest moral state with the
power of entering into the meaning of the world, see Section X, pages
225 to 229.

2 See 399 E and 400 B. Throughout the discussion of musical rhythm-
it is manifest that he regards it as based upon the movements of march
ing and dancing.

EDUCATION OF RULERS IN EARLY LIFE 115

;he world (402 A). He tells us that we have got to learn
:o read the world about us with a view to understand
ing what is good. The world as it first presents itself to
:&gt;ur observation contains both what we call real objects.

"^^*MMMMM^HMWaM^MW^^M^aMM^M^MMM^^MMMMMi^W*MM&lt;toM^^BBW /

living men and women for instance, and images or
reflexions of real objects in the various reflecting media
:&gt;f words, music, colour, and the rest of the media of art.
The problem is to learn to read this world. If we are
able to read the real world we must also be able to read
the reflexions ; to be JUOWTIKO ?, to have the real eye for
beauty, is to be able to read both the real world and the
ceflfiCte.cl. world of art, and to discern self-control and
manliness and liberality and all other good qualities and
their opposites wherever they occur. It is possible to
learn from what we call little things as well as from
^reat, and in learning to recognize and to value the
eflexion of good qualities in art we necessarily learn also
:o recognize and to value them in their more important
expression in real life.

We must notice further that thus learning to read
he sensible world, or the world as it presents itself to
&gt;rdinary experience, is a preparation for learning to read
he world in another way. A man who has been
:ducated thus will have an instinctive sense of what is
&gt;eautiful and what is ugly, and will love the one and

o y

late the other, before he is able to frame in his mind
. reason for loving or hating them. But when reason
omes, a man so nurtured will recognize it and welcome
: from natural kinship to it, that is to say, because
is own feelings are already in accord with it. Plato
onceived that there was a real continuity between the
ducation of art and the education of science and philo-
Dphy, which he afterwards requires should follow it up.

T ^

i **

n6 LECTURES ON PLATO S &lt; REPUBLIC

In childhood_the_soul of man is completely subject to
tha, senses, its perceptions j.re all disordered. Gradually
it frees itself from the tumultuous influences of sense
and establishes order and connexion in what it perceives
and thinks. The great agents by which this process can
be helped are, first, the education in JUOWIKTJ, and, secondly,
the education in science and philosophy. In both Plate
would say there was reason (Aoyos) l ; in its earlier
sensible form it shows itself as rhythm, harmony, and
shape ; in its later, it shows itself as principles or laws
which are apprehended by the intelligence (understood
not seen or heard or felt).

Thus the education of /XOIXTIKTJ is the education of eye
and ear in the widest sense ; it is to be accomplished by
presenting to the eye and ear good works, which wil
interpret to the soul the beauty of the world and enable
it to find it for itself. The artist, by creating for the
soul a sort of atmosphere of beauty which becomes
familiar to it, will develop in it the power of recognizing
what is beautiful in widely different forms, and of making
that beauty its own.

It is curious that Plato seems to attribute much more
educational influence to music proper than to sculpture
We think of the Greeks as a nation of sculptors, and we
do not think of them as a nation of musicians : we mighl
therefore have expected him to attack the idolatry oi
form in the same way in which he attacks the idolatrj
of words 2 . But sculpture is only alluded to in a lisl
of many arts, and then not expressly named 3 . It is

1 In 401 D we have the phrase aAus ^.0705, i. e. reason in the forrr
of beauty.

2 See Section XI, page 244, and Section XV.

3 401 A, where he speaks of painting and all work of that kind.

EDUCATION OF RULERS IN EARLY LIFE 117

a justifiable inference that the existence of great sculpture
in Greece was not so important an educational influence
is we suppose. On the other hand the Greeks were
2xtremely susceptible to words, and, further, they must
have been especially susceptible to rhythmical words ;
ind so Plato speaks of music (rhythm and harmony),
which he has treated throughout as the accompaniment
Df words, as having the most penetrating influence on
the soul. Aristotle speaks of music in a similar way in
the Politics, and tells us that the influence of the plastic
arts is comparatively slight *.

The discussion of /XOVO-IK?) concludes with the considera-

:ion of beauty of human form (403 D to 403 c). The

nan on whom this education has had its due effect, who

.s really /mown/cos, and who therefore has the keenest

perception of beauty everywhere, will necessarily value

Beauty of soul far more than beauty of body. Physical

Beauty which is not the expression of a lovable soul

vill not move him. Moreover, Plato tells us, there is

10 fellowship possible between this sense of beauty and

he madness of animal passion. Excessive passion, he

ays, like excessive pain, puts a man beside himself;

le considers that there is a real affinity between madness

.nd any passion which possesses a man for the time

&gt;eing 2 . Under the influence of any passion so strong

he perceptive power is almost extinguished ; nobody

rusts the judgment of a person under the influence of

bsorbing jealousy or fear or any other passion ; and

o, Plato says, the perception of beauty is incompatible

/ith excessive passion. This is empirically true : it has

een observed about poets that they have not often

1 Politics, 1340 A, 28 sq.

2 See the whole passage, IX. 571 A to 573 c, and cf. 329 c and 577 D.

n8 LECTURES ON PLATO S REPUBLIC*

written under the immediate influence of violent emotions,
but usually afterwards ; and there can be no doubt that
the deeper is the sense of beauty, the less it is compatible
with simple animal r**"" *. and vke versa 1 .

In this passage we find that the word pomco? has
acquired an extended and higher sense ; it means a man
to whom life itself is the highest art; and a little later
we find that the real juwxrucdV is the man who can
fmmiMiLBp his own life, potting pawrunj itself in its right
place in his life in relation to * gymnastic and to other
iV mm.; in life*. The use of this and other phrases
derived from the aits to describe morality, may incline
one to say that Greek morality was aesthetic morality ;
but the truth is not that Plato takes moral distinctions
to be, as we should say, only aesthetic distinctions, but
that he gives * beauty, harmony/ * rhythm, and similar
words a wider sense than we dot

NOTE ON GREEK MUSIC*.

The Greek theory of music took MUHMJ of poetry, time, and

M tiilir JH mfcirt (pjT&gt; r) Aristoxenns,

a pupil of Aristotle s, is the gtcMm authority upon it. It fefl
under the heads of dwu4 and p*4H% the latter of which at*
first included and was afterwards distinguished from **r
AppoWa does not mean harmony in the sense of the simultaneous*
sounding of two or more tones of different pilch, but a scale,
a certain sequence of tones of different pitch. ~ f

that branch of the theory of music which deals with the inte
between tones and their arrangement in what we call scales or

1 With this whole passage compare Sj mjaiimm, 209 t to 212 c.

* 412 A ; c IX. 591 D, and Lubes. 188 D,

3 [In fci* Note seven! additions hare been made to the original,

; _ : : : :- .- -. . ~ ~ .... r i r :tt: :.:.:.:
was given. I:

EDUCATION OF RULERS IN EARLY LIFE 119

keys. Mpos is etymologically connected with words which
have to do with movement The typical form of rhythmical
motion is dancing. The essence of rhythm is that a certain
sequence of motions or sounds is measured, according to time,
into portions which recur upon a certain principle. Pvtifuxrj is
L-: part :: :..t theofj of musk into ivfaidi time eaten ::-:-:.&lt;-.
or the theory of metre (/irrpoF), is the theory of rhythm in its
special application to language,

Plato lays it down as a fundamental principle that rhythm
and harmony are to follow the words. This shows us the great

nerence between Greek and modern music ; the former grew
up as an accompaniment to words or dancing, or both. It was
comparatively late that music began to develop independently
of these, and Plato looks upon this independent development as
a wrong development. The earlier of the great dramatists not
only wrote their plays, but wrote the music for their chorus.
It is stated that Euripides got others to compose the music for
him, and that this was made a reproach to him. One of
Wagners leading ideas has been that of recurring to the
principle that poet and musician should be the same.

According to the theory that has been received till lately,
the diflferences between the various dp/ioruu. or modes. were
analogous to the difference between our major and minor keys,
That is to say, the places in which intervals of tones and of

Tu-tones occurred, differed in different modes. But whereas
we have only two apporiai (supposing this to be the sense of
the word I. the Greeks had seven, one for each note of the scale.
There seem to have been originally three main modes, the
Lvdian. the Phrygian, and the Dorian. On these three funda
mental modes there were three variations, the Hypo-Lydian,
the Hypo- Phrygian, and the Hypo-Dorian (vro- in this com
bination meaning lower in pitch). To these must be added the
Mixo-Lydian 1 . According to the received theory we get these
seven modes by playing upon the white notes of the piano as

1 The Ionian mode appears to have been the same as the Hypo-

Phrygian, and the Aeolian the same as the Hypo-Dorian. Plato

cations also a mode called Syntoao-Lydian, which is believed not

to have been identical with any of the foregcirg. but to have been

to the Lydian and the Hypo-Lydian.

120 LECTURES ON PLATO S REPUBLIC

follows : Hypo-Dorian or Aeolian, A to A ; Mixo-Lydian,
B to B ; Lydian, C to C ; Phrygian, D to D ; Dorian, E to E ;
Hypo-Lydian, F to F ; Hypo-Phrygian or Ionian, G to G *.

There is however another theory, according to which there
is no evidence that in Plato s time the modes, or at any rate all
seven of them, differed in the way described above, and the
main difference between modes was a difference of pitch (the
difference between one major scale and another, or one minor
scale and another, in modern music) 2 .

The two modes which Plato would leave in use are considered
by him to be appropriate to two sets of circumstances, and to
have a tendency to stimulate two qualities of character, courage
and self-control. Whatever may have been the differences
between the modes, the Greeks generally attributed to each of
them a specific character which made it suitable for particular
kinds of poetry and music 3 . Modes were classified as : those
which had to do with action, and had a stimulating effect
i dppoviai) ; modes which stirred emotion (eWJovaiaoTiKcu,
6pTjvu&gt;dfis) ; and modes which affected character,
especially by producing a calming effect (r]6iK.ai). Naturally,
though there was a certain traditional agreement as to the
character of these modes, different writers had different opinions
upon them. The Dorian mode was considered to be the Greek
mode par excellence. Among the epithets applied to this mode
are dv8pwr]s (manly), neyaXoTrpejrjjs (stately), o-Ta.o-ip.os (steady),
o-ffjwos (dignified), &lt;r(podp6s (forcible), and crwdpatTros (sombre).
The Phrygian mode is called opyiao-Tinos (having to do with
religious orgies), iraBr^riKos (expressing deep feeling), fvdovo-iaariKos
(expressing violent religious emotions). The Lydian is called

1 [This must not be taken as implying that the keynote of the mode was
in each case the note here mentioned. ED.]

2 [For the former of these two views see Westphal s works and
Gevaert s Histoire et Theorie de la Musique de VAntiquite. For the latter
view see Monro s Modes of Ancient Greek Music ; see also review of this
by H. Stuart Jones in the Classical Review for Dec. 1894, and the reply
to it in the Classical Review for Feb. 1895. See also Monro s article in the
Dictionary of Antiquities for an outline of all the principal theories. ED.]

See Aristotle, Politics, 1340 A (especially line 40 sq.), and 1341 B,
9sqq.

EDUCATION OF RULERS IN EARLY LIFE 121

y\vKvs (sweet) and TrouaXos- (varied) ; it is also said to be appro
priate to the young. If the accepted theory about the modes is
correct, both Plato s view of the Dorian mode and Aristotle s
illustrate the fact that the present associations of the minor key
are due to a late development of musical sentiment. In the
early Christian Church grandness and sternness were associated
with it ; and early ecclesiastical music inherited the character
istics of Greek music.

Upon the subject of rhythm the Greek writers are still
valuable. The Greeks had an extraordinary sense of rhythm,
and expressed the true principles of it in a final way. In a
general sense all spoken language is rhythmical; every one
observes unconsciously a certain rhythm. This becomes rhythm
proper when treated artistically and brought under laws. For
this purpose we require units of measurement, the units in music
being notes sounded for a certain time. These units are com
bined in music into bars, in verse into feet ; and a dactyl or an
iambus, or any other foot in metre, is best thought of as the
equivalent to a bar in music. Each bar in music and each foot
in metre is made into a unity by having a certain accent or
stress on one of its elements (the use of accent in metre being
a development of the use of accent in speech, where stress is
laid on a certain part of every non-monosyllabic word, and
again on a certain part of every sentence). Poetry then is
rhythmical because it is divided into feet of a certain length,
and there is a certain stress recurring in each foot. Here comes
in the connexion between poetry and dancing. In dancing the
foot is put down with a certain stress at equal intervals of time
the simplest possible illustration of this kind of rhythm being
military marching. The Greeks called the stressed part of
every foot of metre Sea-is or KOTCO XP&lt; )VOS &gt; an ^ the unstressed lipcns
or uva&gt; xpovos] these words referring to the putting down and
taking up of the foot in marching or dancing. So (400 c)
Damon, the philosophical musician, is said in his criticisms of
metre to have in mind the motion of the foot no less than the
rhythm of the words. Modern writers apply the words arsis
and thesis in the reverse way, meaning by arsis the raising,
and by thesis the lowering of the force of the voice. All the
metres of poetry are a development of these simple principles.

122 LECTURES ON PLATC/S REPUBLIC

A hexameter line is a larger unity composed of six smaller
unities (feet), each of which can be resolved into four beats,
four units of time, which are the ultimate elements of the metre.
A stanza again (e. g. the Spenserian) is a larger and somewhat
more complicated unity, divided first into lines, secondly into
feet, and lastly into beats. In Pindar we find a rhythmical
system still more subtle and complicated, but still founded
upon the same principles.

Just as different modes seemed to the Greeks appropriate to
different subjects, so did different metres or times. Plato does
not say definitely, as he does in the case of modes, what form
of rhythm he would allow, but he lays down the principle that
rhythms must be admitted or rejected in accordance with the
character they express. He mentions the three great classes
into which metres were divided. To understand this division
we must remember certain facts. Ancient metre is based upon
quantity, that is to say upon the length of time which is taken
in uttering a given syllable. Modern metre is based upon
accent, stress or ictus, that is the increased loudness of the voice
on a given syllable. There is quantity in modern language, for
you can quite well distinguish long and short syllables, and
quantity does enter into metrical effect ; but the quantity of
a syllable and the amount of stress upon it are distinct things ;
and while in modern languages it is the difference of stress on
different words and syllables which is most noticeable and by
which metre is governed, in ancient Greek and Latin it was
quantity. The fundamental principle in which musical rhythm
and metre come together is that a short syllable answers to
a unit of time in music. Remembering this, and remembering
that the Greeks divided every foot of metre and every bar of
music into two by distinguishing 0eW and opens (the stressed
part and the unstressed), we shall understand the following
simple classification of metres or times, to which Plato alludes.
There is the "aov yevos of time, our four time, in which the
stressed and unstressed parts are equal. Of this the dactyl
and the anapaest are types ; each represents a bar of four beats
(quavers), and is divisible into two parts of two beats each, of
which parts one is stressed and the other unstressed. There is
next the dn-r^daiov yevos (our three time), in which the stressed

EDUCATION OF RULERS IN EARLY LIFE 123

part is to the unstressed as 2 to i. The iambus and trochee
are types of this. There is lastly the i^idXioi/ ye i/os, * one and
a half time (our five time), in which the stressed part is to the
unstressed as 3 to 2. Plato does not give instances of this, but
the type of it is the paeon. Throughout it must be remembered
that a short syllable answers to a single beat of the music, and
that a long syllable equals two short.

In modern musical accompaniments to words, the composer
does what he likes with the metre of the words ; he subordinates
it to his own rhythm, and does not make every short syllable
correspond to a beat. But the earlier we go back the more we
find that the time of the tune corresponds to the natural time
of the words. This was not universally the case in Greece, as
Plato thought that it should have been. The parody of Euripides
in the Frogs 1 of Aristophanes makes a single syllable spread
out over many beats.

Plato requires that the instrumentation of music should be of
a simple kind, as well as the rhythm. The panharmonion
which he would exclude is a stringed instrument on which all
the modes could be played. In his preference of stringed to
wind instruments he is following traditional Greek feeling,
which associated wind instruments with excitement and emo
tional effects, and stringed instruments with the sense of form
and precision. The stringed instruments in use were mainly
varieties of the harp, and not like the modern violin.

5. TTMNA5TIKH AND DIGRESSION ON LAW AND

MEDICINE.

It remains to consider gymnastic/ which has been 403 c to
said to mean the training of the body, but in discussing 4I2 B&lt;
this Plato diverges into widely different subjects. The
order of his thought is briefly as follows : (a) The prin
ciple which he lays down for the training and management
of the body is the same that he has laid down for the arts ;

1 1309 sq.

124 LECTURES ON PLATO S f REPUBLIC

it is simplicity. Simplicity of life leads in one direction
to bodily health, and in another to sanity, self-control,
or temperance in the soul (&lt;r&&amp;lt;ppo&lt;rvvr)). The one is to
the body what the other is to the soul, and there is
a close connexion between them (403 C to 404 E).
(b] This leads to the consideration side by side of two
analogous phenomena of Athenian life, legal proceedings
and medicine, of which the former had always been
prominent, and the latter evidently had entered upon
a new development. Constant recourse to law and
to medicine are evidences of the same fault in civiliza
tion, and Plato lays down corresponding principles
with regard to each, especially contrasting the modern
habit of ^valetudinarianism ^ with the simple ways of
ancient times (404 E to 410 B). (c) By the way, he
shows a difference in the conditions necessary to the
training of a good doctor and of a good judge, which
is based on the distinction between soul and body
(408 c to 409 E). (d) The consideration of body and
soul side by side leads him finally to the thought that
/XOVCUKT/ and yv^vaariK.?] are both really means of influ
encing the soul, though on different sides. He tells
us that the ideal of education is to harmonize the two,
so as to produce a harmonious character ; and he points
out the evils of a one-sided education (410 B to 412 B).

(a) Plato considers first the kind of physical training
that is fitted to produce a good citizen soldier. He finds
in vogue an elaborate system of training which aims
at producing professional athletes, and which seems
to strike him as a part of the general complexity of
modern life. He criticizes it on the ground that it does
not produce that habit of body which befits a soldier.
In the first place it produces a sleepy habit, broken only

EDUCATION OF RULERS IN EARLY LIFE 125

by short periods of great and abnormal activity ; in the
second place it produces a habit of body which cannot
stand changes of diet and climate and the like. This
criticism is substantially the same as Aristotle s 1 . In
bodily training the most important thing is simplicity
of diet. Syracusan dishes, Sicilian subtleties of flavour,
Athenian confectionery, and the rest of the luxuries that
were introduced into the state when it passed above its
most elementary stage 2 , are condemned. Here Plato
observes the close connexion between health in the
body and self-control in the soul. The relation he
sees between them consists in something more than the
fact that intemperance produces disease. We are apt
to think of the soul as something which is inside the
body as if in a box ; in Plato, we have to remember,
soul means primarily the principle of unity and move
ment iri the body which makes it an organic and a living
whole.

(b) When disease in the body and intemperance
(cLKoXao-ia, the opposite of (ruxfrpocrvvr)) in the soul abound,
then Law and Medicine hold their heads high. Plato
criticizes the recent development of these, as he has
criticized that of art. He tells us that to have con
stantly to go to law is a sign of want of education
(cucuSeucrta KOL aTreipo/caAia), and so is the inability^ to
keep Qneself in health without the doctor. This shows

^ " ^ 1 -in rni i i unr*jM-i__-j

us in what a wide sense Plato understands education ;
the educated man is the man who knows how to manage

his own life physically and morally. He writes with
great animosity about the growth of medicine, regard
ing it as a luxury of the rich who can afford to give
up their work for the sake of nursing their health. If

1 Politics, 1338 B, 9 sq. 2 373 A.

126 LECTURES ON PLATO S REPUBLIC

a man is radically diseased and cannot go about the
business of his life, he had better die, as a poor man
in such a case has to, and doctors ought not to be
allowed to keep useless folk out of the grave. The
general idea of the passage is that, except in compara
tively rare cases of accident and the like, a man ought
to be able to keep himself in health without the aid
of doctors. This is a sound enough idea, within limits,
but no doubt Plato s remarks about medicine are far too
sweeping. The craving for simplicity in life leads him
to a good deal of cruelty, as it has led him to austerity
in regard to art. To many of his contemporaries his
treatment of medicine must have appeared altogether
retrograde, and as a mere refusal to avail himself of
the advance of civilization. This is one of the cases
where the spirit of the reformer, of which Plato had
a good deal in him, does not harmonize with the philo
sophic temper, and where impatience of what he thinks
abuses vitiates his theory. The principle that the man
who can be of no use had better be let die (as the incur
able criminal ought to be put to death) would of course
be an extremely dangerous one to act upon at all. No
means have yet appeared by which it could be carried
out as it was intended ; and not only so, but we rightly
feel that it rests with people themselves to decide whether
they are justified in keeping themselves alive when their
usefulness is gone. We rightly feel, too, that the existence
of the sick and incurable calls out a great deal of virtue
which would otherwise be latent.

(c) Incidentally Plato asks whether great experience
of bodily disease in the one case, and of vice and crime
in the other, is not necessary to make a good doctor
and a good judge? He answers that the two cases

EDUCATION OF RULERS IN EARLY LIFE 127

are different. The good doctor must not only have
scientific knowledge (eTrio-TTJ/uTj) of disease, but wide
experience (e/xTra/na) of it ; and it is best that he
should have experienced ill health in his own person,
for his own physical weakness will not affect his soul,
the organ by which he acts on others. But in the
case of the judge, to have experienced the mental
disease of vice in his own person means that the
soul, the organ with which he acts upon others, is im
paired. He goes on to say that the apparent cleverness
of a man who has had much personal familiarity with
wrongdoing is limited to cases where he has to deal with
persons of similar character and experience to his own ;
he judges only by the examples (TrapaSeiyjuara) which
have come within his own experience, and will be at
a loss when he has to judge of the motives and conduct
of a different sort of people. This is what distinguishes
empirical knowledge, which is~confined within the limits
*foT a certain number of experiences, from knowledge
which is based on principles (eTrtqrijjmTi). The application
of this is that, in order to get real knowledge of the good
and evil in human nature, the soul must be kept healthy
from the first. The man who has grown up amid healthy
surroundings and with a healthy mind, will come to
understand the evil which he sees in other people com
paratively late, but will then understand it better than
the man who begins by personal experience of evil.
Plato is not to be supposed to mean that an innocent
simpleton is a better judge of character than a man who
has knocked about the world ; the issue he raises is this :
Supposing people of equal ability, is it better for this
purpose that they should have had a large amount of
evil experience, or that they should have kept their souls

128 LECTURES ON PLATO S REPUBLIC

free from evil, and have studied the evil in the world
late in life when their characters were formed? It is
best, Plato decides, if you wish to have men trained
for the function of judges, that you should aim at
developing what is good in them morally and intel
lectually to the highest pitch, and then trust to their
insight. What this implies is that no line can be
drawn between the intellectual and the moral nature ;
what is called knowledge is not an entirely separate part
of the mind unaffected by other parts, and a man cannot
be affected by moral evil in one part of his soul and
retain intellectual insight into its nature with another
part 1 . We are sometimes inclined to suppose that
a man can keep his intellectual judgment apart from
his personal character ; to this Plato emphatically says
no ; if the character is affected the organ of judgment
is affected, because the soul is one and continuous.
We shall find in Books VI and VII, that his whole
conception of the philosopher and of philosophic educa
tion is based on the close relation which he asserts
to exist between the intellectual and the moral powers
of the soul.

It may be asked how far experience bears out Plato s
theory of the possibility of understanding things in
human nature of which one s own experience is slight.
With average men it would be difficult to show that
it is true ; but it proves true if you take only the
greatest men and those who have shown the greatest
knowledge of, and insight into, human nature. Men
of genius get their knowledge of the world nobody
knows how ; Shakespeare, for instance, cannot have
had personal experience of more than a fraction of

1 Cf. Aristotle, Eth. Nic. VI. xii. 10.

EDUCATION OF RULERS IN EARLY LIFE 129

what he wrote about. In fact, genius is the power
of getting knowledge with the least possible experience,
and one of the greatest differences between men is in
the amount of experience they need of a thing in order
to understand it 1 . There are some people, especially
women, who seem able to understand other people s
characters by instinct. The greatest of all instances
of such a power is the instance of Christ, of whom
it is said that he understood all human nature without
having personal experience of evil in the ordinary sense.
But the chief psychological question which this passage
raises is how far one part of one s nature can act inde
pendently of others, how far intellectual judgment can
act apart from character. This is a matter in which
men vary very much, some being able to isolate the
parts of their mind much more than others.

(d) Returning to IJLOVO-LK^ Plato makes a final state
ment as to its relation to yvjmvaoriKT?. One is said to
deal with the soul and the other with the body, but
both really have to do with the soul ; for misdirection
or neglect of physical training has a direct influence on
character, no less than the misdirection or neglect of
culture. Both are required to develop the elements in
the soul which are essential to a good Guardian. The
training of gymnastic acts upon * spirit ; this when
rightly trained shows itself in courage and manliness;
if trained to the neglect of the rest of the soul, it
degenerates into hardness and brutality. The training
of literature and the arts affects the philosophic element,
the gentle element in man which is susceptible to
attraction. This if rightly developed makes a man
temperate or self-controlled ; if over developed it makes

1 Cf. Section XIV. p. 321.
K.P. K

* . / *r^ ^-^ ^ v f ^^ T ^^

130 LECTURES ON PLATO S REPUBLIC

him soft, effeminate, morbidly susceptible, unstable and
weak in character. The problem of education is to
harmonize these two sides of character, and he who
best deserves the name of musician (/XOVCTIKOS) is the man
who can thus tune human nature 1 .

1 Cf. the description of the art of the statesman in Peliticus, 305 K
lo end.

VI. PRINCIPLES OF GOVERNMENT
IN THE IDEAL STATE

[Republic, III. 412 B to IV. 427 E.]

PLATO has now finished his outline of the education
of the rulers up to the age (about twenty, as we after
wards learn) at which a man enters public life. The
Republic is a representation of the gradual development
of the soul in society ; and the subject we have before
us in the section which now follows, and in which an
outline is given of the institutions of the ideal state,
is that stage of the growth of the soul in which the
young citizen becomes aware for the first time of his
true position in, and his duty to, the community. It is
introduced by the question, Upon what principle are we
:o select, from among those whose training has been
iescribed, those who are to be in public authority, and
vhom the others will have to obey ?

This question at once indicates the leading fact about
his new stage in the development of the soul ; when
t first enters upon practical life it will have to recognize
ts subordination to authority, and to act upon principles
vhich it accepts from authority. The question brings

K a

^-. / WN. * % Tr-k T V * v -w J^-A

132 LECTURES ON PLATO S REPUBLIC

out also a fundamental fact about the state, which will
have to be considered a good deal in the course of the
discussion ; there must be in the community authorities
who impose 5oy/xara, beliefs or principles, upon those in
subordination.

412 B to How the governing class are to be constituted depends
414 B% upon the question what should be the spirit of those who
are to rule the state. Their function is to be Guardians
(^vAa/ces) of the state, and that man will guard the state
best who most fully believes that the interests of the state
are identical with his own. This, then, is the test that
we must use to discover whether those whom we have
been training will become fit to rule ; we must observe
^whether under all circumstances they hold fast the belief
that the thing that is best for the community is the thing
for them to do. This is to be their boy pa, something,
that is to say, which he who holds it accepts without
understanding all the grounds of it ; for the attitude
of a man entering public life must be that of accepting
certain principles from others. We have got to discover
whether they are * safe guardians of this creed, and that
means whether they can resist the influences which are
calculated to make them give it up. Such a belief may
be stolen from us, that is, given up either in the lapse
of time from intellectual indolence, or because some one
persuades us out of it. Or it may be forced out of us
by suffering or painful toil. Or it may be * juggled out
of us by pleasure or fear juggled, because both
these feelings affect us by producing illusion, or making
us see things in a false light. These, therefore, are
the influences by which those whom we are educat- ,
ing will have to be tested at all stages of their career
The test will show whether they are good guardians

PRINCIPLES OF GOVERNMENT 133

of themselves and of the * music which they have
learned, whether the rhythm and harmony have become
a law to them. Those who stand the test best must be
made to rule. This in outline (TVTUD) is the principle
upon which those in authority are to be chosen the
outline will be filled in later l . Those who have stood
the tests well to the end will, when they are older, be
Guardians in the full sense (&lt;vAa/cs Tra^reXeT?) ; the
younger members of the service will be l Auxiliaries
(em/coupot) to the Guardians and will carry out the
principles they lay down (6oy/xara).

In this passage two simple principles are put before
us in combination with a proposal of certain machinery
for carrying them out, which is strange to us. On the
one hand we find the principles, first, that a man will
serve the community well in proportion as he is ready
to devote himself and give up his own interests to it,
and secondly, that men should be promoted in the public
service in proportion as they show that they can bear
responsibility. On the other hand we find the idea
of a system by which the state can continue the educa
tion of childhood into later life, and test its progress
at each stage. Such an idea, which is repugnant to
modern ideas generally, is perhaps particularly so to the
English mind. Something analogous to what Plato
proposes exists in the system of the Jesuits.

The young citizen of the upper class has now been 414 a to
placed in his proper position, under authority. The 4I5D
question next asked is how authority is to be established
in, and made acceptable to, the community at large.
The two essential things which have to be maintained
are the unity of the whole society, and the distinction

1 See 503 sqq.

134 LECTURES ON PLATO S REPUBLIC

of classes, that is of social functions, within it. What
will be the basis upon which patriotism (the sense of
belonging to a community) and submission to authority
will rest in the minds of the bulk of the community?
Plato s answer, when rationalized, comes to this, that the
mass of the people really cannot understand the reason
of these principles, and that therefore they can best be
maintained by being associated with a myth, a story
of past events. They are to be taught to believe in
a myth 1 which will make them regard the country
they live in as their mother, their fellow-citizens as
brothers, and the social order with its distinctions of
classes as a thing of divine institution. There will,
Plato indicates, always be persons in the community
who know that this myth is not true, and that
patriotism and subordination have their sanction not
in historical events, but in the constitution of human
nature; but the rest are to be encouraged by a myth
to hold a belief about the order of the community,
which is somewhat analogous to the belief in the divine
right of kings.

The social organization which Plato thus seeks to
invest with a divine sanction, might at first be compared
to that of caste. But in the caste system birth absolutely
determines a man s position, while Plato s system is
based, not on birth, but on capacity and attainments.
He fully recognizes that children do not always follow
their parents in character and ability, though there is
a general tendency for them to do so ; and he insists

1 The materials for this myth are partly supplied to Plato by the
belief, which he found existing, that there were actual aurox#0j s, or men
born from the soil, and partly perhaps by the belief in a golden/ a silver/
and an iron age, which had succeeded one another in the past.

PRINCIPLES OF GOVERNMENT 135

that every man is to be assigned to the rank and
function for which his character and abilities fit him,
whatever his parentage may be *. He insists, accord
ingly, that provision must be made for cases where
children are fitted either for higher or for lower social
functions than their parents. To him, as to Aristotle,
the hereditary principle seems to hold good as a general
rule, but he wishes to provide a corrective for occasional
cases in which it works ill.

With regard to the use of mythology which Plato
here proposes, there is no doubt that there are great
dangers in acting upon the principle that historical truth
does not matter as compared with truth of ideas. But
we should not forget the fact that suggested Plato s
proposal. It cannot be denied that truth is held in
different forms by different people ; that religious,
political, social, and scientific truths take very different
shapes in unlearned or undeveloped, and in learned or
developed, minds. This fact Plato has recognized. We
might say in criticizing him that it is the duty of
society, while recognizing this inevitable fact, to be
always trying to do away with it, by raising the
intellectual level of the lower classes. This duty is
in theory admitted now. But whatever has yet been
done to remove the fact, the fact remains ; and there
would not be any real difference of opinion among us,
that it is often justifiable to allow people to retain
beliefs which contain a substantial truth, although the

1 [See 415 B and c, and cf. 423 c, D ; but the system, as later
developed in Book V (where Plato relies on attention to breeding to
keep up the standard of the ruling class), would apparently not admit of
promotion from the lower class, but only of degradation to it. He is
evidently apprehensive of the tendency of aristocracies to degenerate ;
cf. VIII. 546 D. ED.]

136 LECTURES ON PLATO S REPUBLIC

415 D to
BookHl

form in which it is put is not the truest. We have to
recognize the differences of form in which truths are
held ; we have at the same time to try and make the
form as adequate as possible, to make the truest truth
true to everybody. This is the real function of
education.

The Guardians and Auxiliaries, as we have seen, are
to k fi watched and tested throughout their public life
to see how well they retain the principles which their
education has formed in them ; their promotion will
depend upon the results. The next point which con
cerns their development is that the external arrangement
of their lives shall be conformable to the principles of
their education. The way of living now described is
to be the complement of the system of education
(4160). Its ultimate object is the same ; the man is to
be made to realize that he is first and foremost a servant
of the community. That is the way in which Plato first
introduces his communism, which is more fully deve
loped in Book V, and which we shall have to discuss
later. His principle being that a man s happiness consists
in doing his work as well as he can, it seems to him
to follow logically that we should make it as hard as
possible for a man to do otherwise. Therefore these
young citizens, when they enter public life, are to have
no inducements to neglect the public interest ; they are
to have no houses, land, or money of their own, but
to live under a kind of military monasticism. The
theory of mediaeval monasticism might in effect be
expressed thus : You are going to serve God ; let the
external organization of your life express that ; do
without everything that is not really necessary to the
service of God. Plato s theory is the same, with

PRINCIPLES OF GOVERNMENT 137

the substitution of the community for God. Both
theories have in common the belief that a great deal
can be done for human character by depriving men of
material facilities for doing wrong, and by compelling
them to live externally a certain kind of life. How
much can really be done in this way, and whether it is
not better for society, having given its members educa
tion, to leave them free as far as possible, is a question
which in one form or another, and in different degrees
of intensity, is continually reviving. For many centuries
in the history of Europe what Plato proposes in this
passage was literally carried into effect. Whatever harm
the system did, it is certain that it also did enormous
good, and it is questionable whether, under the circum
stances under which it arose, the same good could have
been done in any other way. In Plato s own time there
were in some Greek states, especially Sparta, partial
examples of what he proposes ; and this must have
prevented what he says from seeming altogether para
doxical to his readers. Throughout the Republic we
often find a fusion between the Spartan principle of
absolute discipline and the Athenian principle of culture.

The proposal that has now been made leads to the Book IV to
question what account we are taking of the happiness 421 c *
(evdcu/Ltovfa) of this ruling class. Here are men with
brains and power ; is it sensible to propose to take away
from them all the elements which are generally supposed
by such people to make life worth living? According
to what has been said they cannot travel, or keep
mistresses, or entertain their friends, or offer private
sacrifices of their own ; they are not even to be paid
money, but only to be given the provisions they need.
Plato s answer is that we are not yet in a position to

138 LECTURES ON PLATO S REPUBLIC*

consider this question ; for the present we must proceed
on the principle on which we started, that each man is
a part of a whole, the community, and cannot escape
from that fact ; it is futile to ask how we can make the
part happy without considering the whole. He takes
a simple and good illustration to make his meaning
clear : if you were painting a statue you would not think
it artistic to paint the eye purple, because you thought
purple a beautiful colour. And why not? Because
beauty is not an abstract thing ; it always means a cer
tain quality of something in relation to something
else ; so you cannot start in painting with abstract
beauty of colour, for there is no colour which will not
look hideous in certain combinations. In this case you
must start by considering the eye in relation to the
body. Now apply the same principle to happiness.
People talk as if certain things, fine houses and so forth,
were absolutely worth having ; but they are not abso
lutely good ; whether they are good or not depends on
who it is that has them. As for our Guardians, then, it
is of no use to say that as they are the best men in the
state they must have the best things. It will not be
surprising if it turns out (as it does in Book V 1 ) that they
are the happiest of men, but the present point is to fit
them for their function in the community; for it is owing
to their function in the community that

they are, as the eye is made what it is by its function
in tile body. Our object, tnen, is to give not to ther
-GuaTctians but to the whole state as much happiness
as possible. We must leave the happiness of each class
to be determined by nature ; by which Plato means,
by the operation of those principles in the human soul

1 465 D to 466 c.

PRINCIPLES OF GOVERNMENT 139

of which his state is the expression. The question of the
happiness of this or that class has in fact no sense until
you have determined the functions of the class in the
state. If you take agricultural labourers or potters and
put them in fine clothes, and tell them they need not
work any more, you will not, as we should say, be
making gentlemen of them, you will simply be unmaking
them as members of the community ; it will no more
be for their happiness than it will be for the advantage
of the community ; and the same applies to all classes.

This incidentally introduces us to a consideration 421 c to
of some of the duties which, in governing the state, the 4
Guardians will have to discharge. The application of
the principle just laid down to the industrial classes
makes us aware that it is injurious to them in the dis
charge of their functions to possess either too much
wealth or too little. The former makes them indolent,
the latter destroys their efficiency. The principle is
therefore laid down, though the means of carrying it out
are not considered, that the Guardians will have to keep
both riches and poverty out of the state.

This raises a difficulty, for is not wealth the strength 422 A to
of the community, which, we must remember, will have 423
to fight for its existence with other states ? This sug
gestion Plato answers by a bitter satire on the present
condition of Greek states. His citizens will fight against
theirs as trained athletes against fat plutocrats ; for
though, as this comparison reminds him, the rich young
men of Greece do often know something of boxing and
other forms of athletics, they are generally, it is implied,
getting physically degenerate, and they are all ill-trained
in the art of war 1 . But what is more important is, that

1 Cf. M^uo, 93 c to 94 D, and Rep. 404 A.

I 4 o LECTURES ON PLATO S REPUBLIC

a really united state could divide any one of these states
of Greece against itself by offering one class the goods of
another *. Not one of them can really be called a city ;
you want a larger name for them, for each contains at
least two cities, one of rich and another of poor. You
will hardly find a state, Greek or barbarian, which has
a force of a thousand fighting men and which forms a
really united body.

423 c to D. To preserve the unity of the state, the Guardians will
not only have to keep out excessive wealth and poverty,
they will have to see that the state remains at its proper
level of population. It must neither be too great to be
really united, nor too small to be able to supply its own
needs adequately. Harder still, they have to take care
that the system upon which the social classes are divided
is maintained upon the basis of merit, and not of birth
solely.

423 E to These, Plato says ironically, are easy tasks for the
Guardians ; then, dropping the irony, he declares that
all these things will be comparatively easy to them if the
one essential thing, education, is maintained. If they
have once been educated in the principle of devotion
to the community, they will easily recognize the con
sequences of that principle. In enlarging upon this
text Plato expresses an idea which we very seldom find
in him, that of a natural tendency to progress ; if the
constitution is once started upon a right basis and with
a right spirit, it will go on with accumulating force, like
a wheel increasing its speed as it runs. The guard
house of the Guardians must then be built in /xouo-i/oj ;
without that, legislation is useless. In a strong, para
doxical way he tells us that the fashions of music can

1 Cf. Thucydides, III. 8a.

PRINCIPLES OF GOVERNMENT 141

nowhere be changed without consequences of the gravest
importance to the state. The spirit of lawlessness grows
from tiny beginnings. When it begins to appear in
music, it may do no harm at first, but it gradually filters
into the minds of men and becomes in time a great
subversive force. The utmost care, therefore, must be
taken that even the amusements of our Guardians shall
be instinct with the spirit of law l .

Plato s belief that changes in the fashion of popular
music are signs of great political change seems exagge
rated merely because it is stated so simply. A modern
writer would establish the connexion between these
things at greater length, but the idea is certainly not
foreign to modern thought. It cannot be doubted that
great political changes have their precursors, if we could
only see them, in trifling changes of this order ; and
after the event of a great revolution, people often set
themselves to study these precursory symptoms, as
M. Taine has done in writing about the Ancien Regime
and the French Revolution. But the mental and moral
state of a population of millions cannot be observed in
the same way as that of a small independent community
in Greece might have been. If a community something
like a University were an independent state, it would
be far more true than it is now that every change
in such things as musical taste was a thing to take
account of; and in a state like Athens a few prominent
people, such as Alcibiades, who adopted new fashions,
could produce a change which was very noticeable and
very important.

Plato next tells us, in accordance with what he has 425 A to
just said, that it is not worth his while as a political ^

1 Cf. Laws, III. 700 A sqq., and VII. 797 A sqq.

I 4 2 LECTURES ON PLATO S REPUBLIC

philosopher to go into the details of legislation upon
any subjects which he has not yet dealt with. Among
the subjects of legislation he mentions not only matters
of police, commerce, and political organization, but
matters of social behaviour, dress, acts of politeness,
and the like. In a state like Sparta, though there was
little written law, nearly all such things were regulated
by custom, which had the force of law. All these
questions of legislation, he says, will settle themselves
if only the Guardians carry out the laws he has already
laid down upon the subject of education. If, on the
contrary, the right spirit has not been created by educa
tion, no legislation on minor matters will cure the evils
of the state. There remains one subject of legislation
which he has not dealt with, which does vitally concern
education, and that is ceremonial religion (427 B). This,
however, is a matter he does not understand ; all ques
tions about it must be settled by the oracle at Delphi,
the TTdTpios Iftyifnfs the interpreter of divine things to
the Greek nation T . This is an illustration of how con
servative Plato was, though in matters of religious belief
he was unsparingly revolutionary.

The mention of political legislation leads him to
satirize the legislative reformers of his own time (425 E
sqq.). They always act upon the idea that the prin
ciple of the constitution must not be touched, but that it is
a good thing to be constantly tinkering the constitution
in details. According to Plato, the one thing necessary
is to change existing political institutions radically in
their principle and in their spirit, and when that is once
done to keep them as they are ; the legislative reforms

1 This is what the epithet irdrpios implies ; the word for an ancestral
institution of the Athenian people would be

PRINCIPLES OF GOVERNMENT 143

that statesmen now deal in are all of them quack medi
cines. The thought and the metaphor are the same as
in the chapter of Past and Present ( Morrison s Pills )
in which Carlyle satirizes the reformers of his day.

If we ask what is Plato s principle in all that he here
says of legislation, we find at first a paradoxical result ;
he would leave untouched all the things about which
we legislate ; he would legislate about things which no
one would think of asking Parliament to settle, for the
laws } (425 E), which he says it is important to make,
concern the great principles of education, the principles
which should regulate artistic production, and the like.
According to him, the function of government as a
legislative power is to lay down certain general and
elementary principles of life, and to establish a social
rfdos (character) which people shall take in as naturally
as the air they breathe. If that be done, legislation
on the details which our legislation touches will be
superfluous, as merely formulating and putting on parch
ment what everybody naturally does. If that be not
done, legislation is ineffectual, as merely altering little
points in life and leaving untouched the spirit within.
Aristotle is quite at one with Plato in maintaining that
the great problem for statesmen is to keep up a certain
character among the citizens 1 . It is difficult to apply
that idea to a modern state, because the function of
legislation in a modern state is different and its scope
more limited than in ancient Greece, where the lines,
which now separate law and custom, government and
public opinion, had not been drawn as they now are.
However important questions of what we call politics
may be, it cannot be denied that of the most important

1 Aristotle, Politics, 1310 A, 12 and 1287 B ; 8.

i 4 4 LECTURES ON PLATC/S REPUBLIC

things in life comparatively little is touched by Parlia
mentary measures ; and it is an admitted principle with
us, that government must keep its hands off many things
which are of vital importance in the life of the nation.
On the other hand, what we call public opinion does
to a great extent perform the functions which the Greeks,
unlike us, attributed to legislation. We differ from Plato
and Aristotle not in our view of what is fundamentally
important to the community, but in the line we draw
between things with which the state can interfere to
advantage, and things which it should leave alone.
Every age and every country must draw that line dif
ferently, and though we are never likely to assign
to the legislature proper such duties as the Greeks
would, there will always be an opposition between
those who deprecate every attempt to regulate life by
legislation, and those who would say, Let legislation do
as much for the improvement of life as it can. There is
a feeling among us which is expressed in the formula,
that the object of all legislation should be ultimately to
make legislation superfluous ; it may be said that the
more perfect a state of society is, the less it will need
laws and the more will a few elementary principles suffice
for it. On the other hand, there is a feeling that in a free
community the amount of things that can be regulated
well by law is a great test of the general morale ; it
would indicate a very high morale in a community that
it should allow a great part of its life to be governed by
laws laid down by the wisest people in it. The force of
both these principles is recognized in Plato.

VII. STATEMENT OF THE PRINCIPLE

OF JUSTICE

[Republic, IV. 427 E to end.]

THE remainder of Book IV falls into three divisions,
(i) In the first of these Plato determines the virtues of
the state, with the special object of discovering justice
among them (427 E to 434 D). (2) He then investigates
the nature of the soul, and shows that the virtues of the
state are merely expressions of the inward conditions
of the soul (434 D to 441 c). Finally (3), he applies the
results of this investigation in determining the virtues,
and among them the justice, of the individual.

i. The outlines of a good community have now been IV. 427 E
traced, and the question arises, Where is * justice,
which we started to seek, to be found in this community,
and what is it ? In answering this question Plato simply
continues further the analysis of the conception of a good
community, stating the problem of the main elements
of a good community in this specific form : What are the
virtues of such a community ? He starts, as elsewhere,
with accepted ideas ; goodness shows itself in four main

N. P.

146 LECTURES ON PLATO S &lt; REPUBLIC

forms, the cardinal virtues of the Greeks. Every nation
and every epoch has its own idea of virtue and its
own way of expressing it, and the Greeks conceived of
complete . virtjie__as ..showing itself .. under _ these four
principal aspects : wisjdojii__4a&lt;Aa), courage

^ejf^con t r oljfow^ooo^r^ and justice
Accordingly Plato proceeds to enquire in
turn how each of these cardinal virtues exhibits itself
in the life of the state.

The method of this discussion is an example of
the genetic method which Plato follows throughout the
Republic ; that is to say, he gradually develops certain
conceptions which have been present from the first.
The discovery of the virtues of the state is simply the
deeper analysis of modes of action on the part of the
citizens, which have already been implied in the con
stitution of the state. The definition of justice, when
we arrive at it, is the explicit statement of the point of
view from which the welfare of the state has all along
been considered.

In talking about the Republic people sometimes speak
as if the virtues of the state were qualities not of indi
viduals but of some non-human entity, but Plato (as
has already been remarked) means by them qualities of
individual men. The reason why he speaks of them as
virtues of the state is that they are virtues which certain
persons in it exhibit in their public functions. When
you talk of a state as being well governed, you are
describing a certain quality of certain persons in it,
namely those who govern it. What quality, Plato here
asks, do we imply when we say that a state is wise or
brave or self-controlled or just, and in whom is that
quality to be found ?

THE PRINCIPLE OF JUSTICE 147

He begins (438 A to 420 A) with wisdom (Voc/na pr
&lt;j)povr)(ns). This is some kind of knowledge ; but what
kind of knowledge makes a state wise ? The people of
a state may be clever in agriculture or in making wooden
articles, but we should not therefore call it a wise state.
We should call it wise when it showed knowledge not
of this or that particular branch of life, but of how to
conduct itself generally in the whole of its domestic
affairs and of its relations with other states. The essence
of wisdom_is good counsel or deliberation (vj3ov\ia). If
therefore we ask in whom it resides, the answer is that it
must be looked for in those who exercise the deliberative
function of government. The deliberative faculty is very
rare ; there will be many good smiths in the state, but
not many good statesmen. Plato therefore asserts as
an important principle that very few ought to take part
in the deliberative function of the state. It seems to
him a law of nature that only a very few men are so
constituted as to be able to embrace in their minds the
good of the community as a whole. The wisdom of our
state will reside in the full Guardians (re Aeot $vAa/ces),
the deliberative body that forms the legislature and
directs the executive of the state. We have already
seen that these Guardians in the full sense were to govern
all, and that the whole function of the younger Guardians
or Auxiliaries was to accept upon their authority and to
carry out certain boy^ara, of which the sum was that
the interest of the community was supreme. What was
implied in this conception is developed in what is here
said of wisdom and, afterwards, of courage. Wisdom,
then, is the virtue of the Guardians, their knowledge of
the good of the community as a whole.

Next (429 A to 430 C) rnmes enrage (cb opeia, i.

L 2

148 LECTURES ON PLATO S REPUBLIC

etymologically, manliness). If we want to know,whether
a state sjjrayfi,;^^. must l^oJ_at_Jts~any, not because

trie soldiers are the only brave people in the community,
but because it is only through their conduct that the
courage or cowardice of the community can be manifested.
From the external manifestation of courage, however,
Plato at once turns to its inward nature, and defines it
in a surprising way, not as bravery in the field of battle,
but as the rjreservaJjonjjn&lt;^rj^ of ft riVht.

is, and what is not, to be feared. In
a former passage (413) he has already described exactly
the same quality that he here calls courage ; he there
enumerated the influence under which a man is likely to
give up the beliefs that he holds ; the young Guardians
were to be tested as to their power of holding fast under
all these influences the belief (5o yM a or 8oa) that the
interest of the community is supreme. Here we are
told that they must have held fast under all influences
a right opinion (opOii Sofa) as to what is to be feared
(feivov). AeivoV means anything calculated to excite
fear, and the typical bfivov is death ; but there are many
other things that we naturally shun ; all forms of pain or
deprivation of pleasure are in their degree to be feared.
Courage accordingly, the power of resisting fear, is not
confined to the one form of bravery in battle. That is
its typical form, but such bravery is ultimately based
upon the power of sticking to what one believes to be
right, and of holding in their proper estimation the
things that might make one shrink from one s duty,
This, then, is courage. For the state to secure servants
who possess this courage great care is necessary. Just
as a dyer, if he wishes a wool to take the right colour
and to hold it, must choose the right material carefully

THE PRINCIPLE OF JUSTICE

149

and take pains in preparing it for dyeing, so we must
first choose the right nature to train for our purpose, and
then take great pains in preparing it by early education,
in order that afterwards, by the process of obedience to
the law, the belief which the law expresses may sink into
it past washing out. From this courage of the citizen
Plato distinguishes the courage of the brute and the
slave, which do not express any such character as he has
described ; they are not the result of education, but are
blind and irrational, and not subservient to law?| In
leaving the subject, he indicates that his account of
courage is not final, and does not tell us all that complete
courage would involve. What does this mean ? Courage,
as he has here described it, implies an authority which
imposes the belief that is to be preserved ; and there
must be a kind of courage which shows itself in holding
fast beliefs which result from one s own reason and
conviction. Such a virtue is briefly described later
(486 A, B). Starting, then, from a narrow conception of
courage, Plato widens it to include everything that we
should call moral courage, and represents the courage of
the soldier as a particular instance of this more general
moral principle.

We should notice here and further on how Plato
calls virtues * powers (wa/oieis). One is apt to think
of virtues as abstractions, or as, so to say, appendages
hung on to a man. He emphatically represents them
as forces, powers to do something ; a man of great
virtue in Greek means a man with a great power of
doing certain things.

The next virtue (430 D to 432 B), * self-control 3
(o-aHppocrvvri), has been implied in the constitution of the
state, with its distinction between higher and lower

150 LECTURES ON PLATO S REPUBLIC

orders and the recognition by the citizens generally that
this is a right distinction. Appealing to the popular
usage of the word, Plato finds that aw^po^v means
stronger than oneself (upeiTruiv avrov), or, as we might
say, master of oneself. This phrase seems a contradiction
in terms. It can only be explained by the conception
that the self is not simple but complex, and that there
is in it a superior and an inferior part. In using the
phrase we imply that one part of the self ought to rule
the other. Turning to society, where do we find this
self-control showing itself on a great scale ? We find that
the superior elements in the soul are chiefly developed
in the minority who are fit to rule, and the inferior
chiefly in the masses. For a state to be called self-
controlled there must be a distinction of the naturally
superior and the naturally inferior, and the former must
rule. But this is not enough ; there must also be
agreement (o^ovoia) between the classes, and a general
recognition that this constitution is right. The inferior
might be subordinate without this agreement ; but a
really self-controlled community like our state is unani
mous as to who should rule and who obey. We may
then call self-control, whether as seen in the public life
of the state, or as seen in the way an individual man
regulates the different parts of his own nature, a sort of
harmony or symphony, because the essence of it is
a unity of different elements ; and we cannot say that it
resides in any one class of the community more than in
the rest, any more than in a concord the harmony resides
in one particular note.
u,. Lastly (432 B to 4340), witaL. is justice? Really.

iiSocrates exclaims, the principle of justice has been
/(tumbling about before our feet for some time. At the

THE PRINCIPLE OF JUSTICE 151

very beginning of our examination of society a principle
began to appear, at first injts_eco.ri6mic form, afterwards
in a more generjl^form, that each man should devote
himself to that one function in the state for which he
was by nature best fitted. That principle in some form
must be justice. Popular language confirms this idea by
representing it as typical of the just man that he does
his own business (TO ra avrov Trparrct^). But to establish
this we must ask what element of goodness remains in
the state after we have eliminated from consideration
the other three virtues, for the remaining element must
be justice. Therejremains that which enables the other ,^
virtues to exist and maintains them in existence, and it

Ts~The principle which has just been indicated. We may
ixplainwhat Plato means in the following
way : One ran imagine a rnmrrninity in whiph there was
a spirit of intelligence, hardihood 1 anrj of general agrgp-
ment ; but unless the classes and the individual citizens
of that community had in addition the power to do,
each of them, their own duty and to concentrate them-] I
selves on their own work, intelligence would not develop!!
into wisdom or governing capacity, nor hardihood into
disciplined courage, and the tendency to general agree
ment would remain a tendency and not produce a really
unanimous state. Justice, in Plato s sense, is the power
QfJjidwduj^cj^ejU If_a soldier is_just

injhissense, he isjpf course ajjrave man ; if ja,_man in
a subordinate JBOJ&gt;itjon_Js_jiust, he of course accepts and
maintains authority, or isJj?ejf-controlkoV Justice there- /
fore, though it has been spoken of as one among other )
virtues, and though it manifests itself in many particular
actions which are called in a specific sense just, and to
which the names of the other virtues are not applied, is

152 LECTURES ON PLATO S REPUBLIC
HreaHythe condition of_the existence

each of them is a particular manifestation of the spirit
of justice, which takes different forms according to
a man s function in the community. In modern phrase
it is equivalent to sense of duty.

Plato proceeds to confirm himself in his idea of the
nature of justice. The quality that has just been de
scribed as justice is certainly fit to compete with any
other virtue in its beneficial results to the community.
Again, this quality corresponds with the principle upon
which it is acknowledged that justice should be ad
ministered by judges ; this is that every man should
have what is properly his own, which is a particular
application of ro_jra CLVTOV irpdmiv. Lastly, we cannot
imagine a greater harm to the state than a thorough carry
ing out of the orjposite of this principle (iroXvirp ay noovvrj),
which would mean that every one neglected his own
business and meddled with that of others. Apparently
then, if we take what is implied by popular phrases, the
idea that justice means doing your own work and not
meddling with what belongs to others, and if we apply
this idea in its deeper sense, we shall find in it the
principle that we were seeking for.

434 D to 2. Plato, however, will not yet pronounce finally what
justice is. Retaining this idea, we turn to the analysis
of the individual soul to see whether the same conception
will apply. If it does we shall take it to be true. Each
of the virtues that are found in a well-governed state
has an external and an internal side. Each expresses
certain observable facts about the public life of the
community ; we can see whether or not there is in it
governing capacity, military efficiency, public unanimity,
and a general tendency for all classes to perform their

THE PRINCIPLE OF JUSTICE 153

own social functions. On the other hand, each virtue
expresses a state of mind or feeling, on the part of
certain persons, underlying and producing these facts.
This is what interests Plato most, and this is the
meaning of the question, What is justice in the soul ?
Hewishes to continue his analysis of ft goo^ corn-

munity till he finds its ultimate roots in human nature.
showing how all these public virtues depend upon
certain psychological conditiojis___ir the members of
the community.

The connexion must be shown by an analysis of the
soul. In this Plato develops the psychological view, of
which we have already seen something in his treatment
of education. He begins (435 B) by enquiring what are
the different forms of soul, or parts of the soul, present
in each individual man. What is the exact point
from which he starts in this enquiry, and what place
does it take in the development of the argument
of the Republic ? Analysis of society has already
shown us that there are three main social functions,
the deliberative or governing 1 , the protective and exe
cutive, and the productive ; and the good of society
has been seen to depend upon these functions being
kept distinct and upon each being rightly performed.
Can we discover any deeper reason for this organization
of society ? Is the distribution of functions dependent
on the constitution of human nature? If so, shall we
not find that the right performance of function on the
part of society is dependent upon a corresponding per
formance of function on the part of the souls of in
dividuals, and that justice and the other virtues, which, as
we have so far seen them, consist in certain relations
between certain kinds of men in the state, are the

154 LECTURES ON PLATO S REPUBLIC

expression of corresponding relations between certain
elements in the soul of man ? Justice, Plato lays down,
must be the same so far as its form goes (or, as we
should say, must be in principle the same), whether
it is manifested in the state or in a single man ; that
is to say, we may expect to find in the right perform
ance of function by the soul some similar principle to
that which governs the right performance of function
by the state.

In beginning this discussion Plato tells us that he
is dissatisfied with the method by which he is seeking
to define justice, and further on in the Republic he comes
back to this passage (504 A sq.). However, the method
is in accordance with that of other parts of the book ;
ttt consists partly in appealing to popular conceptions,
/refining on them and developing them, partly in apply-
I ing a preconceived princijile of his own by which he
criticizes them. In the first place, he tells us, it is
a truism that the character of a nation or a state is the
character of individual men in it. Men belonging to
the various nations, which came within the field of his
observation (Greeks, Scythians and Thracians, Phoeni
cians and Egyptians), exhibit the dispositions and the
characteristic activities which are the marks of the
several classes of which the state is composed. The real
question, he says, is whether in the various activities or
functions of the soul, which are characteristic of parti
cular classes or particular nations, the whole soul is
active, or only a form or part of the soul. What
makes him think this question so important? If it
turned out that the whole soul was equally involved in
each of these various activities (each of which is specialty
characteristic of the functions of one social class), the

THE PRINCIPLE OF JUSTICE 155

question would arise whether any one soul could not
equally well be employed upon any one of these social
functions, and whether any one man could not equally
well be a governor or a soldier or a trader. The whole
structure of society, as Plato conceives it, is based upon
the fact that the activities in question are activities of
different parts of the soul, and that, though each of
these parts is present in a degree in every man, the
different parts are very differently developed in different
men.

To determine this question Plato first (436 B sq.) lays
down a general principle, which is an application of
what is sometimes called the Law of Identity and Con
tradiction, and which he formulates thus: the same
thing cannot act or be acted upon in the same part of it
and at the same time in opposite ways. To apply
this to the soul ; do we find in it certain forms of
action or reaction taking place at the same time
and towards the same thing, which are mutually ex
clusive and opposite to one other ? Appetite generally,
he answers, may be defined as a form of assenting to
something, drawing something to ourselves, or reach
ing out towards something ; if, then, we ever find in
the soul an activity, the direct opposite to this, mani
fested at the same time and in regard to the same
object, we must infer that there are two different
agents present, two different forms of soul. Now as
a matter of fact we are familiar with this phenomenon.
We often find ourselves, for example, desiring to drink
and at the same time reflecting that it is better not to, and
we must conclude that the element of desire or appetite
(eTugn^tq, or ro fTTLfiv^Ti,K f v) whirh attracts us to the
drink, and the element of reason r" Any/n-r/^ O r &lt;L

156 LECTURES ON PLATO S REPUBLIC

which holds us back from jt^are_Uvp

nf thf&gt; &lt;;nn1 1 .

So far the observation of admitted facts has led us to
distinguish two forms of psychical activity, appetite and
reason. Can we further say that what we have already
called ^spirit* (Ov^os or flv/xoctde? or y 6vv.ovntQa) is a third
form distinct from either (439 E sqq.) ? Plato observes
that when a man is conscious of having acted against
his better judgment in consequence of the stress of
appetite, he is angry with himself and with the appetites
which have made him go wrong ; men have been heard
to swear at their appetites at the moment of yielding
to them ; whereas when a man follows an appetite which
he thinks he is right in following, he feels no such anger.
Further, he observes that when a man thinks that he is
in the wrong and has to suffer for it, the nobler his
nature the less he is capable of feeling indignation; while
conversely, if he thinks he is unjustly treated, the nobler
his nature the more his blood Jpoils. These facts lead
to a double conclusion : first, tat * spirit/ which is that
in us with which we feel anger, is not convertible with
any form of appetite ; secondly, that Jherg^ is a sort
ojf natural affinity between { spirit and the better self
-not indeed that it is never wrong, but that it has
| j a natural tendency to side with reason rather than with
// appetite. On the other hand, it is obvious that spirit
is not convertible wjth_jEas 4 on, for we sometimes find
it rebuked by reason, and we_alsofind_Jt present jn
a high degree in children .andJnJLhe lower animals.

_ ^^_ ^ _ _______ - . "*"* "^~ ___ _i *

"This passage (4356 to 4410) is sometimes appealed

1 [There followed in the lectures a discussion of difficulties in the argu
ment leading to this conclusion ; but the passage has been omitted, as it
was not found possible to reproduce it with the necessary exactness. ED.]

THE PRINCIPLE OF JUSTICE 157

to as the one complete and authoritative statement of
Plato s psychology. It is not so ; it is only a link in
the argument, and brings out a single point, the incon
vertibility of certain psychical functions. What those
functions are is not completely stated here, but must
be gathered from the whole of the Republic ; and the
clearest and, on the whole, most satisfactory statement
on the subject is at the end of Book IX. (a) We find
that Plato s conception of spirit covers three great
facts which seem to him to have a common source.
First, it is the fighting element in man, which makes
him resist aggression, and also makes him aggressive.
Secondly, it is something in man (not itself rational,
but seeming to have an affinity with his better self)
which makes him indignant at injustice, and again
leaves him a coward when he feels himself in the
wrong. Thirdly (in Book IX), it is that which
makes a man competitive and ambitious. (b) The
rational part of the soul (here called TO AoyioriKoV,
and elsewhere generally TO (friXovotyov) has two totally
different functions. It is intelligence, the element in
man which enables him to understand things. But in
Plato s mind this is inseparably connected with a form
of love (which is what the $iAo- in &lt;tAo o-o&lt;/&gt;oi&gt; indicates).
The philosophic element, as it first appears in Book II,
is something in man which makes him fond of what he
understands, and again makes him want to understand
what he is attracted to. Accordingly in Book III it is
this which makes man capable of understanding litera
ture and art, and makes him love what is beautiful ; the
understanding and the attraction go together. It is
this again which holds society together, attracting men
to one another and enabling them to understand one

158 LECTURES ON PLATO S REPUBLIC

another (we also associate these two things together ;
to like a person you must understand him, and to under
stand him you must like him or sympathize with him).
In Books VI and VII the same element in man is the
source of science and philosophy ; these arise from the
fact that there is something in man which draws him
to nature and makes him want to understand it, or that,
in other words, there is a sort of affinity between the
soul and nature. In the present passage the philosophic
element or reason is described merely as something
which is found in certain cases to oppose certain kinds
of appetite, (c) The appetitive part of the soul here
consists in what we should call bodily appetites, and
the desire for wealth (436 A) as the means of satisfying
them \

When Plato suggests that a difficulty might be raised
on the ground (apparently) that appetite or desire is for
something good and therefore is never unqualified attrac
tion to the particular object desired, he is on the point
of passing from k niOv^ia in this narrower sense, which
is best conveyed by our word * appetite, to mOv[j.ia in the
wider sense of any desire, any consciousness of a want.
Taking the word in this latter sense it is difficult to
apply the opposition between reason and desire on which
he bases his conclusions. In every desire there is an
element of rational activity, and in the most reasonable
direction of our activities there is an element of desire.
So we may say that the real conflict is not between reason
as such and desire as such, but between different kinds
of desires, and accordingly in Book IX we find that
each of the three forms of soul has its own special
Plato, however, generally keeps to the nar-

1 Cf. IX. 580 D, E.

THE PRINCIPLE OF JUSTICE 159

rower sense of the word fTriflvjiua, the kind of desire in
which the element of simple attraction is most prominent,
and the element of reason or thinking is smallest; and,
in that sense of kniBv^ia or appetite, the opposition,
which he adopts from popular phraseology, between it
and reason is quite intelligible. (The division of the
soul into three parts, three forms or kinds of psychical
activity, is an anticipation not so much of the division
of faculties (the will/ the reason, &c.) as of Aristotle s
distinction of kinds of soul in the Ethics l .)

3. It remains to apply this analysis of the individual 441 c to
soul so as to confirm our supposition as to the nature Book IV.
of justice. The manner in which it will be applied is
obvious ; but what does it mean, what is the distinction
between the virtues of the state and the virtues of the
individual, and what is the advance that we make in
passing from one to the other ? The virtues of society
(consisted in the ways in which different classes of men
with certain functions in society performed those func-
[tions. The organization of society, owing to which they
had these functions in it, depended upon the fact that
certain characteristics were dominant in certain men,
just as different nations too are distinguished from one
another by the predominance of one or other of the
same characteristics, the fighting spirit being dominant
in one, the cominerciaj_spirit and the^fesire fnrjna.terja.1
projpM^ity_in_anothef. But while different classes and
races of men thus differ, there is no human being in
whom these characteristic things exist alone; no human
hein^^_aj]__apj3edj^^

And so morality, beyond implying the performance by
each individual of the function in society to which, in

1 Eth. NIC. I. xiii. 8 to 19.

160 LECTURES ON PLATO S REPUBLIC

a well-ordered state at any rate, the dominant element
in his soul assigns him, means also certain modes of
action and certain mutual relations on the part of these
fundamental forms of psychical activity in the individual.
A happy instinct, Plato says, has from the first led us
on the track of justice. We dreamt that the principle of
doing one sown business (TO ra avrov Trparrea ). spoken
of first in its simple economic sense, was justice. It
proves to have been an image/ an outward expression
of justice. Real justice means not the mere doing of
one s own business in the state, buLsuch outward doing
of one s own business as_is an expression of

ing mod^oTaction within thesoul ; if the outward action
is really just, it means that the soul is just within, that
like a just state the whole soul and the several parts
of it perform their proper functions in relation to one
/ another. In all points the virtue of a well-constituted
I state is shown to be identical in principle with the virtue
) of a healthy individual soul. When we call a man wise,
we mean he has the power of understanding what is for
his real interest as a whole man ; when we call a state
wise, we ought to mean that the men who have the gift
for governing have their understandings entirely set
upon the interest of the whole state. Again, a brave
man is one who has the courage of his opinions, that is,
one who will carry out his principles, whether those
principles are the result of his own reason or received
from others ; and a brave state is one where the men
Mwho have to defend it, have the courage to carry out
\jthe laws and principles imposed by constituted authority.

gain, by a temperate Qj^eI-cQQtail]ejj_jTian we meaj]
_jt merely one who govenisj3Js_a|)firtit^s, but_one in
whose soul thejy *g- harmony and no inter naj^conflict

THE PRINCIPLE OF JUSTICE

i6c

different parts of his nature ; and by a self-/
controlled state we mean one in which social order]
is not merely preserved by the army and police, but I
rests upon general jigreement. Lastly, a man is found
just in all relations of life in so far as the different
elements of his nature are doing their own business, in
so far, that is, as he is really one man and not many;
and a state is just when it is a united whole, in which
each class is set upon doing that which (looking at the
interests of the community at large) it can do best.
Thus the virtues of the state, which are the modes of
action of the citizens in their public capacity, are, when
traced to their source, the expression of a certain
condition of their souls, which Plato calls justice in the
soul. And further, this inward condition of the soul
and the constitution of society, which is its outward
expression, are so far one in principle that each consists
in the proper discharge of function by distinct parts in
a single whole.

Under all the forms which the argument in the later
Books of the Republic takes, the chief object in which
Plato is interested is to work out this conception of the
healthy constitution of the soul.

N. f.

VIII. COMMUNISM AND DIGRESSION
ON USAGES OF WAR

[Republic, V. to 471 c.]

Books V- BOOKS V to VII form a section of the Republic which
is clearly distinguished by its subject-matter from what
comes before and after, and is described at the beginning
of Book VIII as having been a digression. Some
critics have thought that these Books were written later
than those that follow them, and were inserted into the
original work, because it would be possible to read
straight on from the end of Book IV to the beginning
of Book VIII without noticing any break in the subject
or any great difference in the philosophy or psychology.
The tone of Books V to VII is also different from that
of the previous Books. There is more bitterness, a deeper
conviction of the evils which beset mankind, and a
stronger feeling of the difficulty of reform. Socrates is
represented as feeling at every step that he is in direct
antagonism to public opinion, as almost afraid to say
what he has to say, and yet as convinced and prepared
to face the scepticism and ridicule with which he knows
he will be met. It is impossible to prove any theory

COMMUNISM AND USAGES OF WAR 163

as to how Plato composed his work, nor does it matter
so long as it is clear that there is a real logical connexion
between the subjects of the different parts. It is con
ceivable that the first four Books were published first,
and that criticisms which fastened on the most obviously
paradoxical suggestions in them induced Plato to work
out at fuller length the consequences of his conception
of an ideal state. But it is quite possible also that
Plato intended from the first to compose the work in its
present form. There are in the earlier Books indications
of his feeling that there was a great deal more to be said
about certain points that he raised by the way \ In
a modern book a writer might announce his intention
of treating his subject first in a general and superficial
manner, not because he was unaware of the consequences
to which his principles led, but because he preferred to
reserve till a later stage a fuller discussion of those con
sequences : writing as Plato does in a dramatic way
he brings in again at this point certain personages of
the dialogue, and makes them criticize the procedure
of Socrates and insist on his returning to a point which
needs further working out.

To show the connexion between Book V and the
earlier Books, we must sum up the results that have so
far been reached. Plato has been seeking to discover
the principle, if there is one, by obeying which human
life in society will become the best that it can be. He
has found it in the fact that on the one hand no soul is
self-sufficient, but each requires the help of society, and
on the other hand every soul can contribute something to
the social whole of which it forms part. It results from

See, for example, 414 A, 435 D : and see Book V. 450 B, 453 c,
A, 473 E; Book VI. 497 c, D, 502 E, 504 A, B.

M 2,

164 LECTURES ON PLATO S &lt; REPUBLIC

this that the ideal of human society is a collection of
souls so organized that each may contribute its best to
the whole and get from the whole what it most wants ;
everybody in such a society would do what he was best
fitted to do, and the result would be that everybody
would do both what was best for himself and what was
best for others. The principle upon which such a society
would be based is, according to Plato, that in which
justice consists. His perfect state is substantially the
same in its conception as St. Paul s perfect Church or
perfect spiritual community, and each represents his ideal
under the figure of a perfect human body (462 c).

The particular point, in the description of a state
based on this principle, which forms the connexion
between Books IV and V is the proposed community
of wives, accompanied here by the proposal of com
munity of pursuits between men and women. It has
been laid down in a cursory way (423 E sq.) that the
family along with private property would cease to exist
among the guardians of the ideal community, and this,
it now appears, was meant to imply further that men
and women should both take part in the public life of the
community. Paradoxical as this suggestion is, it is not
thrown out casually ; it is simply the most startling of the
consequences which to Plato himself seem to follow from
the principle which governs the ideal community. The
ideal community would be one which was literally and
indeed a community (KOLVUVIO), and every member of it
would be absolutely a partaker in it (KOIVMVOS) ; he would
have nothing private (foiov) ; he would not be content
with doing certain external acts of a common life, but
would literally feel that he was one with other men. In
fixing upon this point, community of wives, as deserving

COMMUNISM AND USAGES OF WAR 165

further discussion, Plato is forcing himself to carry out
his fundamental principle in detail and to the fullest
consequences which, he thinks, can be drawn from it.

But Book V goes on to a subject which has little
apparent connexion with this. The divisions of the Book
correspond with three difficulties which Socrates has
to face in succession, three * waves, each more over
whelming than the one before it. The first difficulty
is to show that men and women should have the same
education and partake in the same public functions
(451 C sqq.) ; the second, that the family as it now exists

should cease to exist amongst the highest classes, and
that they should form instead one family (457 B sqq.); the
third, that the salvation of society, and its only salvation,
lies in the sovereignty of philosophy (473 B sqq.). The
simplest way of expressing what is meant by this last
contention is to say that human life would be as nearly
ideal as it is capable of being, if it were regulated by
the best possible knowledge on all subjects, and that
it follows from this that the ideal of society would be
realized if statesmanship were combined with the most
profound knowledge. We should observe that Plato
speaks of this idea as one that he has had before him
all along but has been afraid to express ; it is the ulti
mate consequence of the principle upon which the ideal
state was based. He speaks also as if there was a close
connexion in his mind between this idea and that of
communism ; so that the three waves of the argument
form one series. One naturally wonders at first what
connexion there is between the two subjects. The con
nexion in Plato s mind is an idea that if society were
governed by real knowledge and if men saw clearly
what their real interest is, they would see that they

166 LECTURES ON PLATO S REPUBLIC*

could only live at their best by living a perfectly
common life. He finds in the constitution of human
nature something which makes common life possible to
man ; and this is the highest thing in man, that which
makes him human and that also in which he partakes of
the divine 1 ) the philosophic element. The more it pre
dominates the better ; its complete predominance over
the lower elements in man would involve a perfectly
common life, and, conversely, perfect community would
only be possible through its complete predominance.
To look at the matter from the other side, all the evils
of life appear to him to arise from selfishness ; and
selfishness is simply seeking one s own satisfaction in the
wrong way, seeking it in the lower instead of the higher
elements of one s nature. Unselfishness, which enables
a man most completely to live a common life with
others, is one and the same thing with the predominance
of the philosophic element, the highest element in
man s own soul. Thus communism and the sovereignty
of philosophy, which together form the subject of this
Book, appear together to Plato as the ultimate conse
quences of the principle upon which his ideal state is
based.

We may notice at once two aspects of the general
idea which is in Plato s mind, when he makes this
proposal that philosophy should by some means be
made sovereign in the state, (a) The philosophic ele
ment, which is in the first place that which enables
man to understand and to live with his fellows, is also
what we sometimes call the speculative element/ the
instinct of free thought which makes men wish to get
to the bottom of things. To a certain limited extent

1 Cf. IX. 588 D and 589 D.

COMMUNISM AND USAGES OF WAR 167

this exists in every man, and without it he would not
be a human being ; but in the majority it is present only
in a subordinate form. It enables them, perhaps, to
obey certain precepts of reason which society has taught
them, and to feel that they are right in obeying them.
But it only exists in a few people as a really philosophic
or speculative impulse. It is clear that Plato was very
deeply impressed by the evils resulting from the aber
ration of this impulse in the men in whom it is by nature
strongest. If wrongly developed, he believes it is the
greatest instrument of destruction in society ; the majority
of men do no great good and no great harm in the world,
those who do great evil do so by reason of a perversion
of the philosophic element in them. The good of man
kind -requires that this, which is inherently the best thing
in human nature, should not be allowed to become
a destructive force, but should be enlisted in the service
of man. It has already been attempted, in the ideal
state, to enlist the artistic instinct and the fighting
instinct in that service ; let the power of thinking, a
still more potent force in the world, be so enlisted too.
(b) Again, the philosophic element in man answers to
what we should call the spiritual element ; and mediaeval
and modern analogies to the idea of a state ruled by
philosophy may be found in the idea of a spiritual
state, which has been entertained, though in different
senses, by many people. One result of this idea at its
best was the mediaeval Catholic Church, and in England
in the seventeenth century many men had the idea of
a state in which religion should literally rule.

Of the particular consequences which the true idea
of the state seemed to Plato to involve, the form of
communism which he advocates is the most remarkable.

168 LECTURES ON PLATO S REPUBLIC

With regard to this, we should guard against the mis
understanding that communism means to him the
sacrifice of the individual. As we have seen, the simple
and inevitable result of the conception of a community
in the real sense of the word seems to him to be that
the individual should lead a completely common life;
but he certainly does not think that the individual would
be sacrificing himself to the community in leading this
life. On the contrary, when he demands that the best
should be done for the community, it is not in order
that the individual man may be nothing, but in order
that he may be the most that he is capable of being.
The highest life for each individual is that in which the
greatest number of people share, and the lowest that in
which the least number share.

Communism has been advocated from many different
points of view. As advocated by Plato, it has hardly
anything in common with the communism of this
century ; it is not suggested by the evils of poverty,
and it only applies to the highest classes in the state.
The one point common to all systems of communism
is, that all profess to meet certain assumed evils by the
external regulation of human life in whole or in large
part. Plato introduces communism as supplementary
machinery to give effect to and reinforce that spirit
which education is to create. Nobody has insisted
more than he on the comparative uselessness of legisla
tion when the souls of men are not in a right state ;
but he also feels strongly the logical necessity that the
external order of life should be made to contribute its
utmost to the moral education of men. We have already
in the earlier Books seen indications of the attitude oJ
mind which makes him think that for this end the

COMMUNISM AND USAGES OF WAR 169

abolition of the family is devoutly to be wished for.
In his treatment of the arts, despite his intense artistic
sympathies, he adopts a theory which might easily lead
to the extirpation of art from human life. Two feelings
struggle in him, the feeling of what art may do for men,
and the feeling of the evil that is often associated with it ;
and the result of the conflict is the idea that art can only
be made serviceable in the world by limiting it. In the
same way, when he deals with property and the family,
starting from the idea that the more a man leads a
common life the higher life he leads, he becomes filled
with a sense of the enormous evils which attach to these
institutions ; they appear to him as the great strongholds
of selfishness. There can be no doubt that selfish
ness has, in fact, found in these two institutions not its
cause but its most pernicious expression. To Plato,
writing in the spirit of an enthusiast for social reform,
this fact seems to prove that in order to bring about
a common life we must cut away these along with all
other inducements to selfishness.

Two distinct ideas therefore are combined in this part
of the Republic: the idea that the highest life is a common
life and that, so to say, in losing himself a man finds
himself; and the idea that men had better be stripped
of all inducements not to lead this life. The latter idea
will always attract more attention. There seems to be
a perpetual conflict in the world between two feelings.
One, of which Plato may be considered a type, is that
the way to bring about an ideal state of things is to do
away with all occasions of evil. The other is, that the
way to make the best of human life is not to begin by
taking away opportunities of evil, but to use everything
that human life offers in the service of the ideal principle.

170 LECTURES ON PLATO S REPUBLIC &gt;

whatever we may take it to be. This latter feeling, we
may say roughly, is represented by Aristotle. It is by
no means the opposite of idealism ; Aristotle has a more
ideal conception of human life than Plato. The prin
ciple of pressing everything in human life into the service
of what is highest is harder to carry out, and it may
easily sink into a principle of accommodation with
evil, but it is the most ideal conception of life all the
same. Plato s theory may be compared with the idea
upon which monasticism rests, that a man can only
serve God by avoiding certain temptations which tend
to prevent him from serving God, and that therefore,
as it has sometimes been put, a man should live outside
the world. Those who hold an opposite view would say
it is a harder thing and a higher thing to serve God in
the world. At the same time it must be remembered
that it is a harder thing, and there is no doubt that
people living in the world constantly justify by their
behaviour those who would seek refuge in monasteries ;
for they fail to make use of their circumstances in the
world. Great men have been impressed sometimes by
the thought that most people make the worst of the
circumstances surrounding them in ordinary human
society, sometimes by the thought that the only way
to mend this is to make the best of circumstances, not to
evade them.

451 c to * To come to the various sections of the Book,
457 B - Plato first discusses the question whether men and
women are to share in the same education and the
same pursuits in life. He begins (451 c to 452 E) by
laying down the principle that this question must be
decided with reference to the functions which women
are qualified to fulfil in the community. The name

COMMUNISM AND USAGES OF WAR

Guardians which he has given to the rulers (for it is
the women of the ruling class alone that he is consider
ing) suggests to him the analogy of watch-dogs. In
their case sex makes no difference to the function for
which they are employed ; is there any good reason why
it should in the case of human beings ? If there is not,
then women must be trained for and employed in the
service of the state, like men. The consequences may at
first appear ridiculous and grotesque, but no regard must
be paid to this feeling ; everything must give way to the
one consideration of the good of the community. This
is the principle of the Republic from beginning to end.
Plato is intensely utilitarian in the sense that he puts
the good of the community before everything else, and
we have in this passage the strongest expression of his
utilitarianism.

Assuming this principle, we have first to ask (452 E
to 4560) whether it is possible for men and women to
share in the same occupations, for if it is possible, Plato
has no doubt that it is expedient. May he not be con
futed upon this point out of his own mouth, since he has
all along insisted upon differentiation of functions in the
state and attributed all evils *to the neglect of this
principle? This argument, he* says, though it sounds so
logical, is only superficially logical. It is a specimen of
the art, not of reasoning but of wrangling, of the mere
verbal logic, which sticks to the word and is verbally
consistent but disregards real differences of kind. To
say that men and women are different and must therefore
have different public functions, is like saying that long
haired men and bald men are different and therefore
cannot both be shoemakers. For different is a wide
and vague term, and the point in question is not whether

172 LECTURES ON PLATO S REPUBLIC

men and women are different, but what the particular
kind of difference between them is, and whether it affects
their capacity for the functions we have in view. This
is a question of fact. Is there, asks Plato, anything
for which men, as men, and women, as women, are
respectively gifted by nature ? He answers no; men in
general show superiority to women in every pursuit;
there is a general superiority on their side, but no
specific natural gift on either side. If this is so, we
shall expect to find between woman and woman the
same varieties of natural endowment as between man
and man, some women specially fitted for philosophy,
some for war, and so on. So far then from being
contrary to nature, the state of things now being ad
vocated is the natural one, and the existing state oi
things is unnatural.

So much then as to the proposal being possible. As
to its expediency, Plato argues (456 c to 457 B) that
no one can doubt that it is the interest; of the state
that the women in it and the men in it should be as
good as possible, and that if a certain course of educa
tion produces good men, it will also produce gooc
women. So the studies and pursuits that have beer
prescribed for the rulers must also be followed by
their wives. Here Plato repeats the principle frorr
which he started ; there is only one thing beautiful
that which does good, and only one thing ugly, thai
which does harm.

In this discussion the consideration of the right
of women, the modern aspect of the question, does noi
appear at all ; it is a question solely of their duties tc
the community, and Plato does not make his proposa
in the interest of women as a class whom he suppose:

COMMUNISM AND USAGES OF WAR 173

to be wronged, but in the interest of the community.
Whether his proposal would have struck an Athenian
as favourable to women is doubtful ; it mi^ht very likely
have seemed to be dragging them out of a position in
which they would rather be left. Hardly any one would
dispute Plato s position that the real good of the com
munity ought to prevail over every other consideration
in this matter. Most people too would accept his view
of what the good of the community is ; they would
agree that the more co-operation there is in a community
and the more every one contributes to the common life,
the better. The great question is that of the best way
to carry out this conception of public good in this case.
Plato s view of the way in which men and women can
co-operate together for the public good is a compara
tively narrow view. The main public functions he has
in view are the deliberative and administrative and the
military ; but, as it might be put now, there are thousands
of ways of contributing to the service of society besides
being a Member of Parliament or a soldier. One has,
then, to distinguish between Plato s principle and the
particular application which he makes of it, which is to
a certain extent determined by the circumstances of his
time. His position that the more co-operation there is
between men and women, the better, is irrefragable. As
to his application of it he has himself told us the point of
view from which it must be criticized ; we cannot refute
his conclusion by merely saying that men and women are
different, we require to consider thoroughly the question
in what respect they are different. Aristotle, when he
deals with the question, starts from the principle that
the difference between men and women is one which
fundamentally affects their social functions; they ought

174 LECTURES ON PLATO S l REPUBLIC

not to do the same things, but to supplement each other 1 .
From the point of view which he adopts 2 it may also be
said that the analogy of the lower animals to which Plato
appeals would prove nothing, for even granting that in
certain kinds male and female are not widely differen
tiated in character, this is due to the fact that animals
are not so highly developed as man ; in man, the most
highly developed animal, the differentiation of the sexes
is greatest.
457 B to 2, The second wave J of the argument is the dis-

f^. ^^

cussion of the proposal to abolish the family among the
ruling class. A state family is to be substituted for
it, and the most important section of the state made
literally into one great family. Here, as often, we are
apt to be struck by the incongruity between Plato s j
principle and the machinery by which he proposes to
realize it. The principle he appeals to is as high a
principle as a man could have, the machinery makes one
realize forcibly how barbaric much of Greek civilization
was 3 . But what he says cannot be dismissed with
a laugh or by merely saying that the proposal is im
possible ; if he does go wrong, it is worth while to
make out where he goes wrong. He puts forward this

1 Eth. Nic. VIII. xii. 7. Cf. also Politics, 1264 B, i sq.

2 Hist. An. 608 A, 21.

3 It is not clear whether Plato intended unpromising children and
children born unlawfully to be put to death. 459 E seems to mean this,
but the other references to the matter (460 c and 461 c) are obscure, and
in the summary given of part of the Republic in the Timaeus, the ex
pression used is ra Se rwv KO.KUV et? rr)v d\\rjv \aOpa Stafioreov iroXiv (Tim.
19 A), i. e. they are to be brought up as traders, artisans, &c. It is quite
possible that in 459 E rpttyftv is used in the emphatic sense of educating
as Guardians and Auxiliaries, as it is in the Timaeus (ibidem), and in
that case the sentence does not imply that their children should be
destroyed.

COMMUNISM* AND USAGES OF WAR

proposal upon two distinct grounds. First, it is part
of a system for regulating the number of children born
to the community, and still more for ensuring that they
shall be well bred. Secondly, it is a means for increasing
.he common spirit or esprit de corps of the community,
:&gt;y extirpating the various forms of selfishness which he
xmceives to arise from or attach to the present institution
)f the family.

(a) First then (458 E to 461 E) he takes, as before, the
inalogy of the lower animals, and asks why we should
lot take the same care about the breeding of human
&gt;eings as we do about the breeding of domestic animals.
:f the breeding of animals is important, much more so
3 that of men and women. Accordingly he devises an
laborate system by which the production and rearing
&gt;f children of the ruling class is to be brought under
tate control, and regulated upon scientific principles.
Nowadays the question that Plato raises occupies many
eople s minds very seriously. It is evident that the
onditions under which members of the community are
orn are most important, and the evils which result from
ntire disregard of this elementary fact are enormous,
lut to what extent is it possible, men and women
eing what they are, to regulate marriage ? Plato ad-
lits that his proposal could only be carried out by an
rganized system of deception, without which it would
e unendurable. Now the reasons which would make
unendurable to those who had to submit to it are
;ally sound reasons. On the one hand, there never
ould be in any community people so much wiser than
rest that they could safely be trusted to regulate
:her people s lives in such a matter. On the other
ind, to place men under such a control would be to

176 LECTURES ON PLATO S l REPUBLIC

treat them like animals, to ignore their reason. To
put the matter in another way : in breeding domestic
animals man clearly determines the purpose for which
they are bred ; this may or may not be better for them,
but the end of their existence is in man. To introduce
such a scheme into a human society would imply that
certain persons in the community were to determine the
end for which other persons, the majority, were to live.
Slavery has been considered the greatest wrong that can
be done to humanity, because it is treating men like
lower animals, ignoring the right, which belongs to
every reasonable being, to make his own life ; and the
systematic breeding of slaves would be carrying this
wrong to the extreme point. In any system in which
one set of men assumed such an authority as this over
the lives of others, we should feel that the same wrong
was being committed.

(b) It is more important to consider the second argu
ment (461 E to 466 D) by which Plato supports his
scheme, for in this he sets forth in the most striking
way his whole conception of the relation of the citizen
to the state. It is often said that his radical fault in
this and in his preceding argument is that he ignores
individuality, or sacrifices the rights of the individual
to the community. But these phrases do not truly
indicate the point where the fault lies, or the advance
which has been made since Plato s time. We have not
come to believe, any more than he did, that an individual
has a right to do just what he pleases with himself or
his property, or a right to disregard absolutely the
interests of the community in respect to the children
he produces. Every right which he possesses depends
on the recognition of others and is held on certain

COMMUNISM AND USAGES OF WAR 177

conditions ; in other words, it implies a Koivavia. In
dividuality and community, we ought to recognize, are
not mutually exclusive things, as the antithesis of the
individual and the community suggests. The contrast
expressed by this antithesis is really a contrast between
different forms of individuality, or between the less
comprehensive and the more comprehensive ends with
which a man identifies himself. There is no such thing
as an individual in the abstract, a human being literally
independent of all others. Nor, conversely, is there such
a thing as a community which is not a community of
individuals, or a common life or interest which is not
lived or shared by men and women. Nor is individuality,
in the true sense of the word, diminished by participation
in this common life or interest. A public servant who
devotes as much of himself as he can to the public
service does not cease to be an individual; he puts as
much of himself into his work as does the most selfish
miser. When a man so completely throws himself into
the common interest that ne can be said to live for
others, KeTHoies not lose his individuality; rather his
individuality becomes a greater one. . in this sense it
may be "said that what Plato had in view was not the__
abolition" of individuality, but the raising of it to the
highest possible pitch through esprit de corps.

It wouIcT be instructive in this connexion to examine
two common expressions, the phrase esprit de corps ; and
the saying that corporations have no conscience, which
seems to contradict the notions that we attach to esprit
de corps. By esprit de corps we mean a spirit which is
felt and possessed by individual men ; a member of a
regiment who is stimulated by it does not feel it to be
something outside himself. As we all know, a man at

N. P.

178 LECTURES ON PLATO S REPUBLIC

times does in the strength of this spirit things which
he could never do without it, and when he does so he
certainly is not losing his individuality. On this fact
Plato has seized. He practically says that the ideal
of human life would be realized if every man lived
perpetually in the feeling which all men under great
excitement at great national crises do feel. We may say
that this is impossible, but then so is every ideal, and
it is none the less noble an ideal for that. Aristotle
however says that Plato s scheme for abolishing the
family and re-creating it on a larger scale would not
accomplish the result it aims at at all. It would not
really re-create family feeling on a larger scale ; the
family affection which it would diffuse among members
of the community would be but a * watery affection
(vbapr)? &lt;j)i\ia) l . This is a true enough criticism, and it
brings us to the considerations which have made people
say that corporations have no conscience. It is an
undoubted and humiliating truth that when a number
of men act together their sense of responsibility is often
weakened instead of being intensified. Here again the
,fact of acting together with others does not destroy
&gt;a person s individuality, it simply means that he so far
assumes a new individuality ; in the supposed case this
new individuality is lower than his customary indi
viduality, in the cases mentioned before it is higher.
Such observations as Corporations have no conscience,
or * What is everybody s business is nobody s business,
bring out an important fact that human nature is
limited in the degree to which it can really lead a
common life. What is more, if human nature is over
strained in this way, it does indeed live a common life

1 Politics, 1262 B, 15. See also the whole passage beginning 1261 B, 33.

COMMUNISM AND USAGES OF WAR 179

in a sense, but it does so at the cost of its own higher
individuality. When it is said that Plato ignores the
rights of the individual, the real point is that he has not
seized upon this half of the truth.

We may now apply this remark to the particular case
of the family. There can be no doubt that the various
evils which Plato associates with the family are all to
some extent real. He regards the family as the centre
of mean and petty selfishness. So it often is. Take for
example what is implied in our word nepotism/ or
consider how many of the greatest evils in history have
been due to dynastic interests, which are simply family
interests on a large scale. Nowhere does the selfishness
of man come out more obviously than in matters con
nected with the institution of the family. But also
nowhere does the unselfishness of man come out more
obviously. Some of the noblest things that have ever
been done, as well as some of the basest, have been
associated with the love of man and woman or with the
love of parent and child. In fact the individuality of
men here asserts itself in its intensest form, both for
good and for evil. That being so, the problem raised
by Plato s proposal is this: there being certain elementary
and ineradicable instincts in human nature, capable at
once of being the most selfish and the most unselfish,
what is the best way to deal with them and with the
institutions which are their result? Plato says that it
is best in the first place to remove as far as possible
all opportunities for the selfish development of these
instincts, and in the second place to give them scope in
such a sphere and on such a scale that they must be
unselfish. We might answer : The latter part of this
idea is impossible, and the attempt to carry it out

N 2

i8o LECTURES ON PLATO S REPUBLIC

would only result in the watery affection that Aristotle
describes ; the right way to deal with the instincts which
create the family is not to attempt to resolve them into
something higher, but to make the best of them as they
are and use them as a preparation and education for
something higher : we cannot make the state a gigantic
family, but we can make the life of the family a prepara
tion for the service of the state ; for the family may be
an institution in which people learn from their earliest
years an unselfishness which is not limited by the family.

Aristotle in his criticism of Plato s communism puts
the most obvious and far-reaching objection when he
says that Plato s fundamental fallacy is an exaggerated
conception of the virtue of unity. This criticism, how
ever, would be expressed more truly by saying that
Plato has a one-sided and defective conception of unity ;
he does not realize enough that unity in human society
can only be obtained through diversity. The ideal state
of society would be one in which there was the greatest
scope for individual diversity, and in spite of that the
greatest unity.

To return to Plato s demand that the production ol
children should be regulated, perhaps most people whc
thought about it would agree with him that the production
of children is one of the most important factors affecting
the welfare of the community, that it ought therefore tc
be governed by the best knowledge that can be hac
about it, and that individual members of the community
ought to feel their responsibility in this more than ir
most things. But Plato goes on to say that the waj
to accomplish his end is to entrust the regulation of th(
matter to a few highly trained and all-powerful persons
Now we, on the contrary, should probably all agree thai

COMMUNISM AND USAGES OF WAR r8i

Plato s object can only be accomplished in one way,
namely, by the diffusion throughout the community of
that knowledge and that sense of responsibility which
Plato would have concentrated in a few people. This of
course could only be a matter of slow growth.

At this point in the argument tiiere follows a digression 466 D to
upon the usages of war, by whict Socrates evades for 471
a time the question whether such & state of society as he
has sketched is possible. He first describes how children
are to be brought up to be soldiers (466 D to 467 E), and
then treats of the bearing of citizens towards one another
and towards their enemies (468 A to 471 C). There are
here several curious anticipations of mediaeval chivalry.
Voung people are to serve as squires ; love is made
a motive to military prowess ; poetry is to be the
handmaid of war; and there is a general fusion of
sentiment and policy 1 . Again, hero-worship, to which
emphatic recognition is given, takes the form of a regular
canonization of great men 2 , in which the Delphic oracle
may be said to take an analogous position to the Church,
as the ultimate authority. The Delphic oracle is pro
minent in the Republic ; Plato conceives it to be a centre
of unity to the Greek race, and one of the agencies which
counteract its disintegration. Here the oracle is made
to regulate to some extent the usages of war 3 . Plato
lays down that no one is ever to allow himself to be
:aken alive in battle, and that any one who disgraces
limself in battle is to be degraded to a lower social

1 Cf. especially 468 B with 458 E ( We will make the nuptial union as
acred as it can be, and it will be most sacred when it is most useful ).

2 Thuc. V. ii.

3 Of such canonization as Plato speaks of there is a famous historical
istance ir, the worship of Brasidas at Amphipolis.

j82 LECTURES ON PLATC/S REPUBLIC

class. As to the treatment of enemies, no Greek, he
insists, ought ever to be enslaved by a Greek. He
has in mind throughout the unity of the Greek race,
and the natural antagonism of Greece as a whole to
the barbarians. This feeling determines his attitude
towards the usages of war, and makes him forbid not
only the enslavement of Greeks but other usages which
tend to perpetuate and intensify enmity between Greeks,
the offering of arms in temples, the ravaging of the land,
and the burning of houses. The war of Greeks against
Greeks should be regarded not as legitimate war but
as civil (orao-ty) 1 , for the Greeks are one race. What
he says reminds us that, as we find in Thucydides,
the Peloponnesian War acquired, as it went on, more
and more of the character of a social war ^between
class and class, and that horrible results followed from
this. Some of the principles which Plato lays down
appear to have been recognized by the Spartans. The
spoiling of the dead beyond a certain point was for
bidden ; so in Plutarch s Apophthegmata Laconica*
we have a saying, attributed to Lycurgus, which closely
resembles what Plato says upon the subject. The
Spartans also differed from the rest of Greece in not
hanging up arms as offerings in temples, which again
is the subject of a saying of Cleomcnes in the Apo
phthegmata Laconica^. The refusal of leave for the
vanquished to bury their dead was very rare in Greece
and a sign of bitter hatred. Leave was refused to
the Phocians in the Second Sacred War (B. C. 353)

1 Cf. Callicratidas in Xen. Hell. i. 6. 14.

2 p. 228 F.

3 p. 224 H. The reason there given for the practice is very different
from Plato s

COMMUNISM AND USAGES OF WAR 183

Lysander also was reproached for leaving the Athenians
unburied at Aegos Potami.

Having dealt with the usages of war between Greek
and Greek, Plato concludes in a very Greek way by
putting the barbarians in quite a different category;
to them Greeks may behave in war as they now do
to one another. It is a striking instance of how limited
a conception some of the greatest men have had of the
rights of humanity.

IX. PHILOSOPHY AND THE STATE

[Republic, V. 471 c to VI. 502 c.]

471 c to AFTER this interlude Socrates can no longer postpone
meeting the third and greatest of the three great waves *
of the argument : All that has been said of the ideal
state is excellent, and we can say a great deal more
about it ; but is it possible ?

Before revealing the paradoxical secret which he has
got in store, Socrates makes some preliminary remarks
on the relation of ideals generally to reality. An ideal,
he tells us, is none the worse for bein? unrealizable.

We started with asking, What is justice? and that
means, What is justice in itself or as such ? Now we
must not expect any human being whom we call just to
be, so to say, embodied justice, but must be content to
regard justice as a 7ra/&gt;a8eiy/xa or pattern, to which the
justest man approximates most nearly, but only approxi
mates. In other words there will always be, in Plato s
phraseology, a certain difference between things as they
are in themselves (ra OVTO), and things as they come
into existence in our actual experience (ra

1 Cf., for example, 485 u.

PHILOSOPHY AND THE STATE 185

The same difference may be expressed as the difference
between the ideal and the actual. Justice being of the
nature of a pattern for human action, we may say boldly
that what we decided to be the ideal community is the
truth of human life ; true human life would be as we
have described it. All actual forms of human life are
to a certain extent falsifications of the truth ; they fall
short of it. When we are asked to show the possibility
of an ideal, we must first lay down that no ideal is
actually possible, and that to expect it to be so is to
misunderstand it. For it is in the nature of things that
action should get less hold of the truth than words
(Ae ts), or, as we should rather say, than thought. This
is a general principle applicable to all ideals. Accord
ingly in the Laws, in looking back to the Republic, Plato
still insists that the true pattern was what he had there
drawn ; but he says that it was only practicable for gods
or children of gods 1 . In the Reptiblic he abates nothing
of his ideal ; he is simply content to exhibit it as an
ideal ; when challenged as to its possibility, he feels
bound to show, not how human nature can realize this
ideal, but how it can approximate to the realization of it.
This task resolves itself into the question, What is it
in human life, as it is, which prevents it from realizing
its ideal, and what is the least change in things, as they
are, which would enable it to do so? (It is implied that
the questions of the ideal good of man and of the source
of evil in man are really the same.) There is one change,
not a small one but still possible, which would bring about
the ideal of human life ; and, again, there is one great
source of evil in human life. The change would consist

1 Laws, V. 739 B sqq. Plato there proceeds to show what he thinks the
nearest practicable approximation to the institutions of Rep. IV. and V.

186 LECTURES ON PLATO S &lt; REPUBLIC

in making philosophy sovereign, or, in other words, in
the union of political power and philosophical insight;
and the radical source of all the evils of mankind is the
divorce between these two factors. This union of political
power and philosophical insight would involve negatively
the exclusion from power of most of those who now
have it, and from philosophy of most of those who now
pursue it.

This negative requirement is of course what will
excite most opposition and outcry. It touches at their
tenderest point most of the leading men of the time,
whether political leaders or leaders of thought ; and this
explains why in what follows Plato is at such pains to
defend his position. In his defence he addresses himself
rather to the leaders of thought than to the leaders of
politics. He is more impressed by the evils which
result from the waste or wrong use of speculative genius
than by those which result from the comparative ignor
ance of governors. Book VI is full of the tragedy which
is continually going on in the ruin or uselessness of the
most gifted men ; for by philosophers he does not under
stand merely what we understand, he means men of
genius in the fullest sense of the word ; and whereas we
mean by philosopher a man with one special kind of
gift, his description of a philosopher enumerates all the
qualities which go to make up a great man.

From this point to the end of Book VII there is no real
break in the argument. It is a continuous development
of what is involved in the position just laid down, (i)
The first obvious section is that in which it is shown what
is meant by philosophers (474 B to the end of Book V).
(2) The second section (VI. 484 A to 487 A) shows that,
if this is what we understand by philosophers, they should

PHILOSOPHY AND THE STATE 187

logically be the only persons fit to rule, because all the
gifts and excellences, required of the perfect man, follow
from the conception of the philosophic nature. These
two sections together put before us Plato s ideal of the
philosophic nature, and show us what philosophy ought
to mean ; and accordingly (3) the next section gives us
the converse of the picture and shows us what philosophy
does mean as a matter of fact. Here (487 A to 497 A)
Plato tries to explain the admitted and glaring contrast
between the ideal of the philosophic nature and the
actual facts about it. The result is to show that these
facts are due to the want of adjustment between the
philosophic nature and its environment, that it is society
itself which is to blame for these facts, for society corrupts
or makes useless its noblest natures. (4) The next step
therefore is to point out how society can adjust itself to
philosophy, and how the environment of the philosophic
nature is to be made favourable (497 A to 5020). This
finally leads us round again to (5) the question of educa
tion ; for the adjustment of the soul to its surroundings
and of its surroundings to it, is a question of education
in the large sense of that word. Therefore, starting with
a new and enlarged conception of the philosophic nature,
we have to ask what education implies over and above
the education of JUOUO-IK?} which has already been con
sidered. The nurture of the philosophic nature through
a training in the sciences, which leads eventually to the
study of what we should call philosophy, is the subject of
a section extending from VI. 502 c to VII. 534 E. The
philosophic nature in its essence is that in man which
seeks to understand things, which draws him to ask
questions of the world about him and to try to find
himself at home in it. The sciences represent the efforts

i88 LECTURES ON PLATO S REPUBLIC*

of man to understand the world, and by being trained in
them the soul comes to understand the world. They
are the product of the philosophic spirit, just as art again
is the product of it in another phase or stage ; and as, in
the part of education previously described, art was used
to be the nurture of the soul, so here the sciences are
used to be the nurture of the soul in another stage.
(6) The last section of the argument (535 A to the end
of Book VII) accordingly deals with the practical
application of this idea and the actual distribution of the
educational life of the Guardians, the order of studies
and the time spent on each.
474 B to i. First then we come to Plato s analysis of the

A f

Book V philosophic nature, intended to justify the statement that
it alone is fit to rule. It is a passage in which we must
be careful not to jump 3t conclusions, and must be
content with what Plato actually says.

He first treats of the generic character of the philo
sophic spirit, and then gives us its differentia, that is,
what distinguishes it from other spirits which bear
a resemblance to it.

The generic character of the philosopher is deduced
(474 B to 475 E ) from the simple meaning of the word ;
he is a lover of something, namely of wisdom. In
English the word has lost its etymological meaning.
Speculative, 1 in a general sense, is a more appropriate
word than 6 philosophic to describe what is meant by
&lt;/u\o ao(os, though it scarcely covers the same ground.
Probably in Plato s time all that the word necessarily
implied in ordinary use was a sort of higher culture and
a claim to pursue some subject in a rather higher spirit
than was common, so that the most different men,
a statesman, an artist, a man of science, might be said

PHILOSOPHY AND THE STATE 189

to be philosophic (&lt;iAo&lt;ro$etz;), not necessarily with the
meaning that they speculated or theorized on their
subject, but simply in so far as they followed it in
a higher spirit. We sometimes use the word in this
sense still ; thus we might speak of a * philosophic
doctor or lawyer, meaning one who pursued his subject
for its own sake, and who went beyond the ordinary
range of it. Plato fixes at once on that element in the
word which in our use of the word philosopher we tend
to leave out of sight, the element which signifies emotion.
Philosopher means somebody peculiarly fond of a certain
thing. What does this fondness imply? When we
characterize a man as being essentially a man fond of
a certain thing, as a man peculiarly susceptible to beauty
(e/xoriKos), or a born lover of distinction (^uAo n/jios), or a
man with a natural taste for wine ($t\oivos) , or the like,
we mean that he has a sort of indiscriminate enthusiasm
or appetite for the particular thing to which he is thus
susceptible. The man susceptible to beauty is normally
and perpetually in love ; accordingly a whole vocabulary
has literally been invented in order to enable such
persons to describe the object to which they are sus
ceptible, and to leave none of it unmarked. There is
to them a certain charm in youth which they will do
anything not to lose. So with the lover of distinction ;
he has an indiscriminate appetite for honours ; if he
cannot be a general he will be a lieutenant ; he will be
anything rather than not get some title. (We must not
suppose that in this description Plato ignores facts about
which he is silent. He has emphasized one side of
enthusiasm for a given object, and with perfect truth ;
but he has omitted to remark that all these tempera
ments are peculiarly critical as well as indiscriminate.

190 LECTURES ON PLATO S REPUBLIC

The undoubted and curious fact is that, when a person
is intensely fond of a given thing, he is peculiarly critical
about it. In the case of wine, and again in the case of
ambition, this is obviously so. Yet, as in these cases,
the good critic must be enthusiastic about what he
criticizes. When we call a man by a name which
implies that fondness for a certain thing is of the essence
of him, we ought to mean that this fondness is in the
first instance an indiscriminate appetite. The best analogy
to express what he should be is the most homely ; he
should be like a man who has a good and strong diges
tion, he should be the opposite of squeamish.)

Now to apply this to the philosophic nature We
must not say that a man is of a philosophic nature unless
he has this indiscriminate appetite for /xa07J/zara. We are
here again at a loss for a word ; for * knowledge is not
general enough. Plato includes under the title &lt;iAo/xa0eis,
people whom we should certainly not include under the
title seekers of knowledge ; he includes theatre-goers,
lovers of art, anybody to whom it is a keen pleasure to
exercise his eyes and ears. Mavddvtiv means, in fact,
any exercise of mind through which we get a new
experience.

We have so far arrived at this, that the philosopher
is a person who has a boundless curiosity for new
experience ; and this is his generic character. But it
is obvious that we cannot say that every one that has
this character is a born philosopher. It is shared by
many whom we should not call philosophers ; by theatre
goers, concert- goers, and intelligent artisans. They have
some affinity with the philosopher, in having this indis
criminate pleasure in exercising their minds ; but we must
ask, What is it that differentiates the philosopher from

PHILOSOPHY AND THE STATE 191

those who share this generic character ? The philosopher I
proper is not one who likes looking at everything new,!
but one who likes looking at the truth l .

But what do we mean by the truth, the specific object
of the philosopher s vision, and how are we to distinguish
the truth ? Plato proceeds (475 E to end of Book V) in a
preliminary and general way to answer this question, and
his answer brings before us, though in a statement which,
he implies, is only a brief r/sumS of something already
familiar to his hearers, his conception of * forms or
ideas (etSt], elsewhere tSecu).

The assumption with which he starts, is simply that
there are distinct kinds of things or forms of being ;
justice, for instance, is absolutely distinct from injustice,
good from evil, beauty from ugliness. Further, when-
ever we speak of a kind or form of thing, as of justice 1
or beauty, we mean that it is one ; that there is a likeness
in all the things that belong to this kind ; that justice,
for example, in however many things it may occur,
remains one and the same justice. Each distinct form
or kind is thus a unity. But, further, each distinct kind
of thing appears as a great many things ; or, as he puts
it, these forms or kinds communicate with one another
and with bodies and with actions ; and thus each appears
as a multiplicity. What are called forms then are, in
the first place, the elements of unity in the manifold
objects or things which we apprehend by the senses.
Now if we go back to the people who like using their
eyes and ears, and from whom the philosopher has
to be distinguished, we find that the objects on which
they exercise their minds are just these manifold things,

1 Tovy rrjs d\r)9(ias &lt;&lt; \o0fajitovas, OtdaOat is the word used of spectator
at the theatre.

192 LECTURES ON PLATO S REPUBLIC

voices, colours, figures, not beauty as such, but this, that,
and the other beautiful thing. Whereas the philosopher
is the man who is able to distinguish the * kind or form,
and who loves to do so.

In order to characterize these states of mind further,
Plato goes on to show (476 D) that the philosopher has
knowledge (yj- w/xrj), while the mere &lt;iAojua0/js has only

* opinion (8oa) l . Now when we say that we * know
a thing we imply that it has being in plain English, !
that it is ; and the being of a thing is exactly conter
minous with its knowableness ; if you ask what anything
really is, the answer must be that it is all that is known
about it. On the other hand what is the negation of
being is also the negation of knowableness ; it is nothing,
nonentity not a mysterious something beyond what
we know, but just nothing, of which we can say nothing
and think nothing. What answers to this on the part
of the mind, as knowledge answers to being, is utter
ignorance. (Ignorance in the full sense is blankness of
the mind, and we must not read this passage as if Plato
spoke of ignorance as a faculty, having an object called

* not-being ; ignorance is the negation of faculty, and
its object is no object.) Now in ordinary language we
distinguish knowing from mere thinking or opinion, which
lies between these two extremes of perfect knowledge or
mental illumination and perfect ignorance or darkness.
And knowledge and opinion are both called powers or
faculties (Swa/^ets). How do we distinguish one power
from another? It is not something that we can see,
distinguished by colour or shape ; we distinguish it only
by what it does, by its province and operation. Know-

1 Besides what we call opinions, &6a covers what we should call
perceptions and even feelings.

PHILOSOPHY AND THE STATE 193

ledge and opinion, we agree, are different powers ; they
must therefore have different objects or operations, or
produce different effects. The object of knowledge is
what is ; or, in other words, the operation of knowledge
is to produce consciousness of what is. Opinion also
must have an object ; we cannot think nothing. On the
other hand, it cannot have the same object as knowledge.
It results that the object of opinion must both be and
not be. We can neither say that it is in the full sense,
nor that it is not in the full sense ; for if we could, opinion
would not be different both from knowledge and from
ignorance.

With these results let us turn back (479 A) to the

distinction we found between the manifold objects

which present themselves to ordinary perception, and

the distinct forms or elements of unity which underlie

them. There are those, as we saw, who like to use

their minds on the audible, visible, tangible world and

its multiplicity ; this they take to be the reality, and it

is the sole reality that they believe in. And there are

:hose, on the other hand, who assume the reality of what

Plato calls forms (of some principle, for instance, which

institutes beauty itself, or justice itself), in which the

manifold objects participate, but which none of them is.

f we asked people of the former sort to tell us what

s beauty, justice, weight, they would answer by pointing

mt beautiful objects, just actions, heavy things. But if

ve take any one of these many things, and observe it in

. different relation or position, we find that, in Plato s

anguage, it plays double, or exhibits opposite qualities.

Take a beautiful thing and put it in a different situation,

nd it is easily made ugly ; this is most obvious in the

ase of colours. Take a just thing, an act or a law;

N P.

194 LECTURES ON PLATO S REPUBLIC

do the act or apply the law under different circumstances,
and it is easy to make it unjust. Take a heavy thing,
and it will be light when compared with what is heavier
still. Thus what Plato says is illustrated alike from
the spheres of art, morality, and nature. Each of the
many things that come under any one category holds
of opposite qualities ; there seems no reason for saying
it is this rather than that ; we can most simply express
its nature by saying that it is both. It both is and is
not, i.e. is and is not beautiful, is and is not heavy.
It answers then to what has been said of the object of
opinion. These manifold objects, which we point to
if asked what anything is, are the very objects which
the bulk of mankind hold to be the only reality.
Opinion is thus the state of mind of most people on
most things. Yet it is clear that this state of mind does
not correspond to what we expect knowledge to be, nor
its object to what we expect reality to be. We may
therefore say generally that what appears as the reality
to ordinary people in their ordinary, received opinions
about most things l is tumbling about between * what
is (the full reality) and what is not (what has no
reality at all).

Returning to the point at which we started, we have
defined the philosophic nature as that which loves tc
look at the truth, and this is now found to mean that
the philosophic nature is always looking for unity in the
manifold or variety of which our ordinary experience ii
made up. For our ordinary experience is emphaticallj
contained in a great number of separate objects; but
when we think, we cannot but see that these many thing!
do not satisfy our idea of complete reality, and we havf

1 Td TWV TTO\\UV iroXXd vujj.i^.0. ttaXov re irepi teal rwv aXXwv, 479 D.

PHILOSOPHY AND THE STATE 195

to seek for some principle or law or unity underlying
these many objects. Everybody, we may remark, admits
this to some extent. For instance, we all must recognize,
if it is put to us, that justice did not come into existence
with any particular law, and does not perish when any
particular law becomes obsolete ; and that there must be
some more permanent principle of justice underlying
the actual laws and customs of society. And the same
thing is still more obvious in physical science ; the first
thing we have to learn when we try to understand
physical phenomena is that such things as weight are
relative. What Plato here calls philosophy is the clear ,
and complete recognition of what we all to some extent
admit. To state his conception of the philosophic mind
briefly, it is one which constantly looks for principles or
laws or unities of which the manifold of our experience
is~the pHenomenon 1 .

Plato s conception of forms corresponds to what we
have in mind when we speak of principles in morality
and of laws in science. What he says applies alike to
moral, aesthetic, and physical conceptions; the form in
every case is that which is constant under variation, and
it is what the man of science is always trying to get at.
To the ordinary mind it seems at first unreal, less real
:han the ordinary view of things as they appear, the
sensible world ; but the world as it is for science, the
-vorld of what Plato calls forms, is not a second, shadowy,
mreal world, it is the same world better understood.

Plato speaks in this passage of the communion

We may compare Shelley s Hymn to Intellectual Beauty, and stanzas
,2 and 54 in his Adonais, and Rossetti s sonnet, Soul s Beauty, with the
anguage in which Plato contrasts sensible phenomena with the unseen
&gt;rinciples which underlie them.

O 2

196 LECTURES ON PLATO S REPUBLIC*

of forms with acts and bodies/ their being
communicated to acts and bodies (476 A). The meaning
of the expression may be put as follows : If you take
any given act called a just act, you will see it is not the
whole of justice ; it only partakes in justice along with
other acts. Justice may be regarded as something com
municable (KOWOV) in which various acts and persons
partake without diminishing or modifying justice, as the
common interest of a community is shared in by all its
members without being diminished, and remains some
thing one and the same in them all. The sense in which
forms are said, in the same place, to communicate with
one another, is different. If you take a given act, person,
or thing, you find it is the meeting-point of various
principles or forms. A particular act is never merely
just ; it always has other qualities besides, and it may
even be partly unjust. So the forms of justice and
injustice and other forms meet and communicate with
one another in this act. In the Sophist Plato tells us
that one of the great ways in which scientific knowledge
shows itself is in recognizing what forms thus communicate
with one another, and what forms have no communication
with one another 1 .

Plato contrasts clear and complete perception of a truth
(perception of the form) with confused perception of it,
by contrasting waking with dreaming vision (476 c). The
ordinary man is in a dream with regard (amongst many
other things) to justice ; like a man in a dream he takes
the resemblance for that which it resembles, or in other
words takes one thing for another with which it is so far,
but only so far, the same. For, Plato says, he identifies

1 See Sophist, 251 D, and 252 E to 253 c. Cf. also Polittcus, 277 E to
278 E.

PHILOSOPHY AND THE STATE 197

particular just laws and actions with the principle of
justice. What does Plato mean by this? Our first im
pulse, if asked what justice is, would be to instance some
familiar actions, precepts, or institutions. We may be
right in thinking that the main part of justice for us
consists in them ; but if (to take this instance) a man
identifies justice with certain laws, he may be reduced
to a hopeless difficulty if it can be pointed out that the
laws become unjust or obsolete. This has always made
mankind look for principles that remain constant as the
world changes. Laws, people say, may change, but
justice remains justice. Again, if a man acts on the
principle which Plato describes, that certain actions he
is familiar with are justice, when he comes to a just
action which looks rather different he thinks it is not
just, because he has identified justice with another thing.
In this he is like a man to whom shadows and superficial
resemblances are the whole reality. This is the meaning
of Plato s insistence that the just act is not justice, but is,
as he puts it, like justice.

2. The next section of the argument is complementary Book VI to
to that which has gone before it ; it develops the con- 4 7 A
ception of the philosophic nature from its more ethical
side. From the general description he has given of that
nature Plato now proceeds to deduce the ethical charac
teristics which it seems to him to imply. If the philosophic
nature were what this deduction shows it ought to be, there
could, he claims, be no doubt that it should be placed at
the head of society.

We have reached this conclusion : first, the philosophic
nature has an indiscriminate appetite for knowing about
things ; secondly, its search for knowledge is distinguished
from other kindred forms of activity by the fact that it is

198 LECTURES ON PLATO S REPUBLIC

always trying to get at the underlying principles or
forms of which the manifold and changing world of
experience, as it presents itself to us, is the partial
appearance. We have next to ask, What is the bearing
of this conclusion on the fitness of the philosophic nature
to govern ? and this again brings us back to the question,
What is involved in being a good ruler or guardian
(484 C)?

In order to keep or guard a thing you must have
a clear vision of it. If then a man is to keep or guard
laws and institutions and to improve them when they
want reforming, he clearly must not be blind ; he must
have in his mind some clear pattern or principle by
which he can know whether what he is maintaining is
really just and expedient, and to which he can appeal
when he wants to change existing institutions. To
expand what Plato says, a statesman cannot know
when the existing order is failing to serve its purpose,
and in what way to reform it, unless he has in his
mind some definite principle to go upon as to the
purpose of that order. The perception of forms or prin
ciples is therefore of vital importance for the governor ;
and if a man who possesses it can add to it what is
called experience (efttrct/ua) he will have the essential
requisites for good government. E/unreipta, whether used
in a good or in a depreciatory sense, means that knowledge
which comes from habitually having to do with a thing.
It may be extremely valuable ; it may be almost worth
less. Thus (fjiTtfipia sometimes denotes mere superficial
acquaintance with a thing, and is contrasted with know
ledge of principles as we contrast rule of thumb with
science l . Sometimes, as in this passage, it is used tc

1 In this sense Plato often uses Tp&gt;/3rj; cf. 493 B.

PHILOSOPHY AND THE STATE 199

denote the real acquaintance which comes from practice.
In all such cases, it is represented as the necessary filling
up of knowledge of principle ; for a man cannot carry
out principles unless he knows how to recognize them in
the details of life and to apply them to details. True
knowledge of principles involves a fortiori the knowledge
of details. Plato is impressed with this truth ; and in
his scheme of philosophic education in Book VII, the
fifteen years from the age of thirty-five to the age of
fifty are set apart exclusively to the special purpose
of acquiring the experience which is necessary in men
who are to become leading statesmen. But what is here
insisted on is the supreme importance for the statesman
of having a principle in his mind. Without that ex
perience is nothing 1 .

It only remains now to ask (485 A to 487 A) whether
the philosophic nature carries with it the other qualities,
moral and intellectual, which go to make up a good and
great character. This is somewhat analogous to the
question in Book II, whether spirit is compatible with
gentleness. In that case Plato decided that the one
quality, if real, implied the other, and his answer is
the same here. He proceeds to deduce from the simple
conception of love of truth all the virtues which seem
to him to be part of perfect human nature. He first
describes afresh in emphatic language the essence of the
philosophic nature. It involves the passion for reality,
the impulse to get at, and to be at one with, the per
manent laws or principles of things. To such a nature,
he remarks, there is nothing too great and nothing too
little for study, because everything is capable of leading
to the truth (cf. 402 c). From such a disposition there

1 Cf. 409, 493 B, 520 c and 539 B

200 LECTURES ON PLATO S REPUBLIC

follows instinctive hatred of falsehood. Self-control
follows no less, because the love of truth is emphatically
an absorbing passion ; it is an appetite (eiriflu/tua), and
when a man s appetites are intensely set in one direction,
other desires grow weaker like a stream whose waters
are diverted. Again, any kind of meanness or spiteful-
ness or little-mindedness is inconsistent with such
a nature, for the essence of it is to be always reaching
out after the whole world, human and divine. Courage
must follow too, for the fear of death is impossible to
a mind to which human life is a mere fragment in
a greater whole, and which has its vision set on all time
and on all existence. And justice must follow, for a
mind not influenced by fear, greed, or personal passion
has nothing to make it unjust 1 . There are also intel
lectual qualities which will go with such a nature. It
must be quick and retentive, for a man cannot love
learning if the practice of it is constant pain to him.
It must also possess e/^rpta a sort of mental symmetry
or proportion. This is a quality which makes the mind,
so to say, naturally adaptable to the nature of things 2 .
(Plato is fond of representing the relation between subject
and object in knowledge as the relation between two
things which are akin to one another and like one
another. It is habitual with him to say that a soul which
easily learns is one which has a great and natural affinity

1 Or 5t/&lt;rt5/i/3oAos, i. e. difficult to deal with in business.

2 Evayuyos, i. e. easily converted into any required shape, is used in
the same sentence as an equivalent to C/HMTPOS. The epithet evxapu,
literally graceful, is coupled with them. This also is a word expressing
primarily a physical characteristic. It is equivalent to etxrx^/wf, well-
shaped. In III. 400 D sq. fJLOvoiKTj is, in effect, said to make the mind
tvaxhpuv and cvapnoaros (apt or adaptable). In that passage good taste,
good manners, good feeling are what the words refer to.

PHILOSOPHY AND THE STATE 201

to things about it. Learning is the conforming of one s
mind so as to fit things ; everybody finds in learning
that, while most things are difficult, there are some which
it is comparatively easy for him to conform his mind to ;
and the mind which is well proportioned (e^er/?os) is the
mind which is most ready to be thus conformed to most
things. Thus in the Sophist 1 y the soul is said to be
liable to two forms of evil, corresponding to bodily
disease and to bodily deformity ; the former is vice, the
latter is ignorance ; it is described as a condition where
the soul has an impulse to think, but thinks beside the
mark because there is a want of vvwtTpia between the
soul and truth ; ignorance is ajxerpia. The philosophic
nature, then, will have a natural predisposition to get hold
of things ; it will naturally adapt itself to the form and
nature of things.) And now, Plato asks, who would
hesitate to entrust the state to people endowed with
the philosophic nature, if it necessarily implies all the
qualities we have enumerated?

Plato has here described the philosophic nature, as
he understands it, in its fullness. It is simply the ideally
good nature ; human nature completely gifted, and with
free play given to all its gifts. His idea of it is at
variance with our use of the word * philosophic/ but it is
quite consistent with the gradual development of the
philosophic element in the soul as it has been described
in the Republic from the first. The leading idea in
Plato s conception of this element is that it is that in the
soul which prompts it to go out of itself and unite itself
with something else which is akin to it. It is thus the
source in man of very different things. It is the source
of gentleness and sociability, for it is that which draws

1 aaS.

202 LECTURES ON PLATO S REPUBLIC

men together with a sense of the familiarity of man to
man. It is the source of the love of beauty, including
the literary and the artistic sense, for in what is beautiful
the soul finds something which it recognizes as its own
(oi/ceioz;) and in the presence of which it feels at home.
Lastly, it is the source of love of truth, and this means
the impulse to understand and be at one with the world
about us. Though ordinary English psychology would
not agree with Plato in deriving these three different
things from a single source, there are many familiar
facts which illustrate, and to a certain extent bear out,
what he says. For example, we all know that for us
to understand another person, or to understand human
nature, sympathy is the essential thing. An unsym
pathetic man is a stupid man. The great masters in
understanding human nature have been those who have
felt at home with all mankind. Similarly in studying
things, even the most abstract, we cannot understand
them unless we feel a certain interest in them, and that
is the same sort of feeling as sympathy.

The philosophic element in man, then, is the essentially
human element; it is what makes a man a man, and there
fore in its fullness it implies a perfect humanity, a fully
gifted human nature. For a conception parallel to this
we should turn in modern times to religious thought.
It is to be found in the love of 1 God and man which
is represented in the New Testament as resulting in
all virtues, and making a perfect man. There is an
analogy, for instance, between Plato s deduction of all
virtues from philosophy, and St. Paul s deduction of
all virtues from * charity in I Corinthians xiii. For in
this conception of philosophy there are combined the
scientific spirit and the religious spirit in their highest

PHILOSOPHY AND THE STATE 203

forms. It is the desire to be at one with the laws of
nature, and to live according to nature ; and as to Plato
the world is emphatically the work of a divine intelli
gence, being at one with nature is also in a sense being
at one with God. That is why he speaks of such

understanding in terms which we should apply to

r
religious emotion.

3. To the proof that the philosophic nature is fit 487 A to
to rule Adeimantus (487 A) makes precisely the objection 4
which every reader of the Republic is inclined to make.
This sounds very logical, he says, but the facts are all
the other way ; if you look at the people who are called
philosophers, who pursue the study of philosophy beyond
the mere purposes of education, the best are made use
less by the pursuit of philosophy, and the majority are
either eccentric or disreputable. One may compare this
with what might be said with equal truth about the
religious spirit ; some people are disposed to say that
what is called the love of God results either in a saintli-
ness which does no good to mankind, or in a zeal which
is alloyed with ambition, cruelty, and fanaticism, or,
worst of all, in cant and hypocrisy.

Socrates, so far from denying the facts alleged about
philosophers, heartily admits them. It is the very truth
of these facts which has led him to say that the evils
of mankind result from the divorce between speculation
and action. He goes on to attempt to explain them,
considering in order the uselessness of the few genuine
philosophers, the corruption of most of those who are
gifted with the philosophic nature, and the usurpation
of the name of philosopher by charlatans.

First (487 E to 489 D) Plato puts before us, in the
allegory or image (dwv] of the ship, a picture of the

204 LECTURES ON PLATO S REPUBLIC

situation in the world of the few genuine philosophers
that there are. In that allegory the owner of the ship
who sails in it is the Athenian people, which owns the
state and is supreme therein. Plato s description of him
is noticeable : though he is the biggest and strongest
man in the ship, he is rather deaf and short-sighted,
and he is ignorant of navigation, but he is a noble sort
of fellow, good at bottom. With this we may compare
the passage further on (499 E), where he says of the
masses, Don t be so hard on them ; it is not their own
fault that they are so hostile to philosophy, it is because
they have never been shown what it means. Aristocrat
as he is by birth and intellect, Plato has a kind of half-
pity, half-sympathy for the people. The men he really
hates are demagogues in politics or philosophy. The
sailors in the ship are the statesmen and leaders of
public opinion. Their principle is that in order to sail
the ship it is not necessary ever to have learnt the art of
navigation, and indeed they hold that the art really
cannot be taught at all. The one man on board who
could sail the ship, who possesses the double qualifica
tion of theoretical knowledge and skill to command,
represents the true philosopher. He is regarded by
the others on the ship as a mere star-gazer. This is the
simple explanation of the uselessness of the philosopher;
he is useless because the world will not use him. And
it is not in the nature of things, Plato thinks, that
a doctor should go about to his fellow-citizens and ask
them to let him heal them ; the natural relation is that
those who want should go to those who can give l .

1 The uselessness and helplessness of the philosopher are vividly de
scribed in Theaet. 172 c to 176 A, and Gorgias, 484 c to 486 D ; but in
the former passage Plato almost glories in them, and in the Gorgias the

PHILOSOPHY AND THE STATE 205

But, secondly (489 D to 495 B), this uselessness of the
genuine philosopher is the least of the causes which ruin
the state. A far more serious cause is the demoralization
of most of those who have the gift for philosophy. Before
describing this, Plato returns to his account of the philo
sophic nature. He repeats in stronger terms what he
has already said of it, that its essence is the irrepressible
impulse to get behind the manifold and penetrate to the
reality ; that there is a certain kinship (fuyyeVia) between
the soul and reality, and that the philosophic nature
is not satisfied until the soul has become actually one
with reality l . How is it, then, that most of those who
have this nature become demoralized ? Its very gifts 2
help to destroy it by drawing it away from philosophy,
its true life ; and the external good things of life, beauty,
strength, wealth, and powerful connexions, also help
to destroy it. If we look at this phenomenon as part
of a more general phenomenon, and regard the human
soul as one among other living organisms, coming under
the same category as plants and animals, we can under
stand how it comes about. All these things require
a certain environment to live in, and they grow according
to it. The strongest of them, Plato says, suffer more
serious consequences from bad nourishment than the

philosopher is declared to be, in spite of them, the only true statesman.
Plato s tone in the present passage is different ; he feels that the only
hope for mankind lies in the reconciliation of philosophy and the world.

1 He describes knowledge under the image of sexual love. Truth and
intelligence are, so to say, the offspring of the union between the soul
and reality, and the attainment of truth is the satisfaction of the pangs of
the soul. So in the Symposium, the attainment of knowledge of the good
is represented under the figure of love clasping the beautiful ; and the
progress by which the mind comes to desire this knowledge is repre
sented as a gradual progress from a lower to a higher idea of beauty.

* The tyvaiKul dptrut of Aristotle ; Eth. VI. xiii. i.

206 LECTURES ON PLATO S REPUBLIC

weaker ; and so the most gifted souls are the most
injured by noxious surroundings ; and the great criminals
of the world have never been small or weak natures, but
always great natures corrupted. This being so, let us
ask what is the environment into which our supposed
philosophic soul is born. It is born into an atmosphere
of public opinion which meets it in the assembly, the
law-courts, the theatre, the army everywhere where
men are gathered together. This public opinion is
invincible and irresponsible ; no individual soul can
assert its own independence of it except by some super
human gift of nature ; it is the source of law ; practically
it is the great educator, and there is no other education
worth talking about. Public opinion is the one great
sophist, and those poor amateurs whom public opinion
represents as corrupting the youth, merely repeat and
formulate the dictates of the very society that thus stig
matizes them. Here Plato s tone towards the sophists is
one of contemptuous pity; they are simply bear-leaders of
the people. The people, symbolized before by the owner
of the ship, is here described, with less good nature, but
with no actual dislike, as a great and strong beast who
lets himself be handled by his keepers provided they
study his whims and do all they can to humour him \

The so-called leaders of opinion, then, only formulate
opinion. They have no knowledge of the things they
speak of; and though they talk of good and bad, just
and unjust, these are no more to them than names for
the likes and dislikes of the multitude 2 . And the

1 Cf. Demosthenes, Olynfh. III. 31.

2 They can only say, Plato adds, that the just and good are the
necessary. See Tintaeus. 47 E sq., for the antithesis of the necessary and
the rational.

PHILOSOPHY AND THE STATE 207

multitude can never be philosophers, but will tend to be
distrustful of philosophic principles, and hostile to them.
Born into this atmosphere, what is likely to become of
the philosophic nature with all its gifts ?

The passage in which Plato answers this question (494)
is supposed to refer to Alcibiades l . He certainly seems
to be speaking of some actual man ; and we know that
it was made a reproach to Socrates that Alcibiades and
others among his most distinguished friends turned out
badly. Suppose, says Socrates, after describing a man
born into Athenian society with every gift of nature
and of fortune, that some one goes to the man so gifted
or surrounded, and tells him the truth, that he has not
got wisdom, that he needs it, and that to win wisdom
a man must be a slave under the burden of that task :
what will happen ? If at first he shows a disposition to
listen, the leaders of society will at once be up in arms,
and set in motion every means to destroy the influence
of the one man who could save him ; they want to use
him for their own ends -. This is the way in which men
of a nature which ought to make them the benefactors
of mankind generally become its destroyers. Society,
partly unconsciously and partly deliberately, corrupts
those who might be its noblest members.

Thus, to come to the third point (495 B to 496 A),
Philosophy is deserted by those who ought to be her
followers. Yet she still retains the splendour of a great
name, and the reputation of a philosopher remains an
object of ambition and competition. From this state-

1 Cf. with this passage Alcibiades Prim. 105 B, 132 A, 135 E.

2 There is a certain likeness in this passage to the saying of the New
Testament : How hardly shall they that have riches enter into the
kingdom of heaven.

208 LECTURES ON PLATO S REPUBLIC

mcnt one may gather, as one may also gather from
Isocrates 1 y that philosophy was a name over which
people fought, men of different kinds claiming for them
selves the title of philosopher, as a title conveying
distinction. (There is no English parallel to this
name ; but, though the word culture has not the same
grand associations, it has been the subject of similar
contention.) Plato was one of those who aspired to bear
this title, and to exhibit a true conception of what
philosophy should be, and in developing that conception
he necessarily fell foul of others. Doubtless in contem
porary literature he was called a sophist, and denied the
name of a philosopher ; but on the whole it was Plato
who did most to fix the meaning of the word in its
highest sense. He now proceeds, in a most picturesque
and powerful passage, to describe the usurpation of the
name of philosophy by unworthy aspirants. It is the
most personal passage in the Republic. We cannot
be certain what kind of people no doubt a particular
set of people, known to his readers he was thinking of.
But one can guess that they were probably inferior
lawyers and rhetoricians, who were indelibly dyed with
what we might call the professional taint. He describes
them as having their souls cramped by their trade. (The
quality of fiavava-ia (the taint of the shop) which he
attributes to them, seems originally to have described
a sort of physical distortion which arose from intense
application to mechanical arts, and to which was largely
due the contempt of the Greeks for such arts. Here this
analogy is applied to men s souls, as also in the Theaetetus 2 ,

1 For the meaning which Isocrates attached to the words philosopher
and sophist see Kara TUIV ^oQiar&v, and Hfpl

2 173 A.

PHILOSOPHY AND THE STATE 209

where we are told how the slavery of the law courts
gradually makes men small and crooked in soul.) Little
creatures of this sort, who are smart at their own trades,
take a leap into philosophy. To change the metaphor,
they marry Philosophy because there is no one else to do
so, so poor is she ; and the fruit of their union is seen in
those misbegotten theories and ideas which circulate
in the world under the name of philosophic principles.
This it is which brings upon philosophy the reproach
that it is not only a useless thing, but is charlatanry.

It remains (496 A to 497 A) to mention a few causes
which still keep a small remnant of true philosophic
natures in the service of philosophy. Sometimes a man
of noble nature, well educated, is banished, and thus
escapes demoralization. Sometimes a great mind is
born in some petty state, and despises its political life.
Some few come to philosophy from contempt of the
art or profession in which they are engaged ; a few are
kept from politics by ill -health ; and a few, perhaps, by
a sort of divine intimation like the divine sign which
keeps Socrates himself from politics. All these are
abnormal circumstances, which (except the last-named)
would not arise if the world were as it ought to be ;
and these few true philosophers who do survive, have
nothing better to do than to keep themselves as pure
from taint as they can, and to wait. A man who has
lived a life like this will have done something great
before he dies, says Adeimantus. Yes, answers Socrates,
but not the greatest thing unless he finds a city fit for
him ; for in that case, he will save both himself and the

commonwealth.

4. In the section which now follows, we are shown 497 A to
in a general way how the divorce between the world 5

N. t. P

210 LECTURES ON PLATC/S REPUBLIC

and philosophy, so mischievous to both of them, may
be brought to an end. The foregoing sections have
shown us what philosophy really is, namely the perfection
of human life, and what the actual facts of human society
are ; this section brings us to the reconciliation between
the elements which have been so violently contrasted
just before. Various incidental passages in it express
the same spirit of reconciliation. Socrates and Thrasy-
machus are declared to have been made friends ; and
Socrates himself, as he rises to the height of the argu
ment, is made to picture the work of reconciling men
to the truth in this life as only a fragment of a process
which extends through eternity. The world at large is
declared not to be so bad as we think ;fthe hostility
men feel to philosophy arises from igriorance of it, and
if they could only be shown what it means, they would
be reconciled to itj The reason why the mass of man
kind will not believe us is because what is generally
called philosophy is an artificial jargon of words and
ideas fitted together like a puzzle, so as to look consistent,
whereasTtrue philosophy is a natural harmony of word
and deed, theory and practiceT) And, again, the so-called
philosophers are men who are generally occupied in
personalities ; whereas (the true philosopher must from
his own nature be at peace with men, for he dwells
in a kingdom of peace, constantly in the presence of
a world where injustice is neither done nor suffered,
a world of unchangeable law, whidj is embodied reason^.
If then there could be found a man who could transfer
the perfect law, of which he has the vision, into the

1 This passage states most strongly the belief that the mind assimilates
the law and reason which it sees in the world, Cf. Tim. 90 D j Theatt,
176 B-E.

PHILOSOPHY AND THE STATE

characters and institutions of men, like a great artist
taking human nature as he finds it and moulding it in
the light of his own high conception, we should indeed
have a reconciliation between the ideal and the reality.
However difficult this may be it is not impossible, for
it is not impossible that a genuine philosopher may
be found, possessed of great power, who will escape
deterioration, and it is not impossible that mankind may
listen to him.

5. The question which remains after this general
indication of the possibility of reconcilement between
philosophy and society, concerns the course of study
and the method of life by which the men who have the
philosophic nature can be trained, so as to be not the
destroyers but the saviours of society. How/ as Socrates
puts it, can the state handle philosophy so as not to be
ruined ? The form of his question gives a strong, strange
impression of the double-edged and dangerous character
of the force in human nature with which he is dealing l .

1 479 D. Cf. VII. 537 D to 539 c.

P 2

THE GOOD AS THE SUPREME
OBJECT OF KNOWLEDGE 1

[Republic, VI. 502 c to 509 c.]

THE failure of society to provide the right environment *
for the philosophic nature having been made apparent,
we are brought again to the question of education,
which forms the subject of discussion from this point
to the end of Book VII. A system of education is
to be sketched out which will supplement, where this
is necessary, the partial education already given through
jutouo-tfoj and yujtzraortio/. What is the particular defect
of this education which requires to be supplemented ?
It is that it provided no adequate nourishment for the
philosophic nature in its more advanced stage. There
is an essential continuity between Books II to IV, and
Books V to VII, in their treatment of the philosophic
nature ; still, so great an advance has been made in the
latter Books in the conception of that nature and in the
corresponding conception of the education it requires,
that it looks as if Plato were beginning all over again,
and had forgotten or ignored what seemed in the earlier
Books to absorb his whole attention.

GOOD AS SUPREME OBJECT OF KNOWLEDGE 213

All the very different things that are said of the
philosophic nature from Book II to Book IX are bound
together by a common idea. This is the conception of
the philosophic element in the soul, as that which makes
the soul go out of itself under the attraction of something
which is familiar to it and akin to it, and in union with
which it finds satisfaction. In all its various senses the
philosophic element in man is the attraction to what is
like oneself and yet outside oneself, whether it be attrac
tion to other people, or attraction to beautiful things in
art or nature, or attraction to truth. In these different
things Plato seems to see the more and the less developed
stages of a single impulse in the soul, the highest stage
being that in which the soul goes out not only to human
beings, nor only to what is attractive through being
oeautiful, but to the truth of the world about it, in
anderstanding which the soul finds a satisfaction of the
;ame nature as that which it finds in union with its
ellow-men. The problem, then, is to find a system of |
education which shall provide nurture for the soul in this
itage, that is to say, for those very few souls in whom
he philosophic impulse is so far developed as to require
urther nurture. The great bulk of men would find
atisfaction for this element of the soul in the active
ife of good citizenship in which they are engaged in
ommon work with their fellows, but there would be

few among them driven by an inherent impulse of
heir natures to look for laws or principles underlying
he institutions which the bulk of men accept with
arious degrees of acquiescence. In the case of such it
; of the utmost importance both to themselves and to
Dciety that they should be trained rightly, for otherwise
icy will follow their impulse wrongly. But what actual

2i 4 LECTURES ON PLATC/S REPUBLIC

method of study and life will these few become, as Plato
says, the saviours of society ?

502 c to More than any other passage of the Republic, the
passage in which this question is introduced explains
the relations between the earlier and the later parts of
the dialogue. A criticism is made on Books II to IV,
and we are told what advance on them is required. We
are told that the community of wives and the appoint
ment of rulers are two difficulties which Socrates had
been conscious of all along, and of which in the earlier
Books he had intentionally put off the treatment. Com
munity of wives has been further discussed in Book V,
and here we are brought back to the question of the
appointment of rulers. Socrates refers explicitly to the
sentence in Book III, in which the selection and appoint
ment of rulers is said to have been dealt with in outline and
not with aKpt/3eta J ; and the nature of the advance now
to be made is summed up in the word aKpificicu This is
a quality originally associated with artistic work, and
aKpi/37Js means primarily, not accurate or precise, but
exact, in the etymological sense of finished. It is the
opposite of what is merely sketched, and we constantly
find Aristotle opposing it to what is * in outline (TVTTO)) 2 .
All through this passage we find the same contrast
between what is to follow and what has gone before,
insisted on from different points of view. The earlier
treatment was incomplete (dreAe s), it was a sketch
(v7roy/oa07J), it was something without its full measure
(not accurately measured). Where did this want of
completeness in the earlier parts of the work lie? It
appeared in two principal points : in the account of
the selection and appointment of Guardians, and in the

1 414 A. 2 e.g. in Eth. NIC. II. ii. 3.

GOOD AS SUPREME OBJECT OF KNOWLEDGE 215

account (which really underlay this) of justice and the
other virtues l . Plato begins with the appointment of
rulers.

The principle upon which the original rulers were
selected was that the best man to guard anything is
the man who loves it most. Accordingly the supreme
qualification for a Guardian of the state was that he
should really love the state. The test to be applied to
his qualifications consisted in exposing him to various
emotional trials, pleasures, pains, and fears, which would
be calculated to make him give up the belief (So y/xa) he
had learned, * that he should do in everything that which
seemed best for the state. If he showed his constancy
by withstanding all these tests he would be a full
Guardian ((frvXag TraireA?/?) 2 . But this selection was said
at the time to be only provisional, and now the course
of the argument has brought us back to the question
who are fitted in the fullest sense of all to be Guardians
(TOVS aKpifieaTCLTOvs $uAa/cas), and we have already found
that they will have to be philosophers. This involves
a fuller training and a severer testing of the character
of the Guardians than we at first thought necessary.
It means that the philosophic element in human nature,
which we saw from the first must be strong in those
who are to rule, contains in it capacities for development
greater than we had then any idea of. Out of this
element arises the irrepressible speculative impulse in
human nature with all its capacities, and this impulse is
a double-edged thing. We see now that it is not enough

What is described as want of atcpifieia refers indifferently to the state
of mind of the Guardians selected, and to our own state of mind or that
of the supposed electors of the Guardians.
a See 412 B to 414. B.

216 LECTURES ON PLATO S REPUBLIC

merely to regard constancy of character (jSe/Saio rrjs) in
selecting our Guardians, for we have to look also for
a quality which seems just the opposite of that. The
speculative temperament does not naturally fit with the
orderly and solid and constant temperament ; it is quick,
impatient, aspiring, and this side of it cannot be ignored.
And yet we cannot dispense with that constancy which
we before made the essence of a Guardian s character.
So we have again come upon the problem of how to
effect a reconciliation between contradictory qualities,
for we have to combine in our Guardians the intellectual
restlessness and aspiration of the philosophic character,
with that orderliness and constancy which is equally of
the essence of a good nature. We want, then, to fill up
the sketch of the choice and education of Guardians by
showing how to test and train this new and dangerous
element. Therefore to the tests of pleasure and pain
we shall have to add the tests of intellectual work, and
see whether the Guardian has also the sort of courage
that will stand them. We have besides to supplement ;
our former system of education by taking account of the
philosophic faculty, not in the sense of the love of beauty
and the like, which ^OVO-LKTI took account of, but in its
present sense of hunger for knowledge.

Again (504 A), there was a want in the account given
of human morality in the earlier Books. The general
principle by which we determined its nature was one of
empirical psychology. We took from observation three
main elements in the soul, and explained the four main
virtues that are generally recognized by showing that
they expressed certain states of these three elements and
certain relations between them. But, as was stated at
the time (435 D), the description then given of these

GOOD AS SUPREME OBJECT OF KNOWLEDGE 217

virtues was inadequate. We now want to see the
moral nature of men wrought out into a perfect and
finished picture. (It is to be noticed in this passage
(5040) how naturally and almost without warning the
supposed Guardians, whose education is under discussion,
are identified with ourselves, the parties to the discussion.
This is a good instance of the fact that the education of
the Guardians is primarily meant for ourselves.)

The result of this whole passage is that, whether we
regard the Republic as a treatise on political and social
reform, or simply as the exhibition of an ideal theory of
human life which every one may apply for himself, it is
necessary that the previous conception of what man is
and needs should be carried further and filled up. And
if we ask why, the answer is that there is something in
human nature, at any rate in the nature of those who
influence the world, which will not be satisfied with the
development of character which, in the earlier Books,
seemed to fulfil the requirements of morality.

The next question therefore is, What addition in 504 E.
knowledge will supply the want we have discovered in
the training which the earlier Books prescribed ? What
sort of knowledge is required to convert the previous
conception of the virtues into a finished conception, and
the Guardian as previously described into a Guardian in
the fullest sense ? The answer is : * knowledge of the
good. The Guardians will be poor guardians of justice
unless they understand wherein is the good of justice ;
until a man learns what it is that makes the different
sorts of goodness intrinsically good, his possession of
them is only the hold of opinion and not of knowledge.
The knowledge of the good will fill up to their full
measure all the inchoate ideas of morality which we

2t8 LECTURES ON PLATO S REPUBLIC

have thus far come across. This is the highest object
of knowledge (peytoroy piaflr^a), and in it all the utmost
aspirations of the speculative spirit will find satisfaction.
The more developed form of education which is now
to be described must therefore be an education which
gradually leads up to the conception of the good.

It is essential to the understanding not only of Plato
but of Greek philosophy generally, both moral philo
sophy and the philosophy of knowledge, to realize the
place held in them by the conception of the good.
We see at once from what Plato now proceeds to say
of the good, that three ideas, which to us seem to have
little concern with one another, are for him inseparable.
The good is at once: first, the end of life, that is, the
supreme object of all desire and aspiration ; secondly,
the condition of knowledge, or that which makes the
world intelligible and the human mind intelligent;
thirdly, the creative and sustaining cause of the world.
How did Plato come to combine under one conception
ideas apparently so remote from one another ?

We must banish from our minds at starting the
ordinary moral associations of our word good, those,
for instance, which attach to the phrase a good man V
To ayaOov does not in the first instance involve any
moral qualities ; both to ordinary people and to philo
sophers among the Greeks the good meant the object of
desire, that which is most worth having, that which we

1 [The phrase dyadus di fjp as actually used in Greek seldom or never
means what we mean when we call a man simply a good man. It means
a man good at some work or function implied by the context, and in fact
is most commonly used of a man good at fighting. The modern colloquial
usage by which in discussing, say, football players, we might say So-
and-so is a good man is identical with the usage of the term in Greek.
ED.]

GOOD AS SUPREME OBJECT OF KNOWLEDGE 219

most want. We also are quite familiar in books with
the conception of the desirable as the object of human
will, but we do not at once realize its meaning. The
best way to make ourselves realize it is to say that
the good or desirable at any given moment to any
giveifman is that which he would rather be or do
6T"Have than anything else. If at any given moment
a man will give up his life in order to get money or to
save his country or avenge himself, then money, or the
safety of his country, or vengeance, is to him at that
moment the one good ; for it he is ready to give
up everything which he can give up. Therefore what
is the good to us varies every day, but at every
moment there is something which we take as our
good. In Greek philosophy and popular thought, it
was a sort of ultimate truth that man is a being who
lives for something, that is to say that he has a good.
This is the most fundamental fact about man ; he is
always living for something, however much he tries
not to do so.

Further, to a Greek, certainly to Plato and Aristotle,
this is only another way of saying that man is a rational
creature. When we speak of a rational person we
generally mean one who does not make a fool of himself;
this and other phrases, such as * a rational being, do not
with us refer to anything so far back as do the Greek
phrases which we should translate by them. To the
Greeks the statement that man is a rational being meant
simply that man cannot help aiming at something ; he is
a creature of means and ends ; everything that he does
is from the constitution of his nature regarded by him
as a means to something. This is a fundamental point
of Greek moral philosophy. Hence the inseparable

220 LECTURES ON PLATC/S REPUBLIC*

connexion in Plato and Aristotle between reason and
the good. This is not an association between some
particular good thing, some true end of life, and some
particular kind of reason which is specially rational,
as our use of the word rational and of the word good
might suggest, but between reason as such and an end
as such. The rationality of man means that he is
a creature who has ideals, and who cannot help having
them. An ideal is something which is not fully present
at this particular moment in this particular thing, but is
yet partly attained in it. The conception of an ideal
involves, on the one hand, that it is never wholly realized,
on the other that it is continually being realized. How
ever much and however often the object with which
man acts may change, he never lives absolutely in the
present ; in the moment he is always thinking of some
thing beyond the moment ; and it is in virtue of reason
that he does so. It is owing to this that man is what we
call a moral being. He is capable of morality because
he has reason, and reason compels him to live for an end ;
and the problem of moral philosophy to the Greeks is
always, starting from this fundamental conception, to
determine the true end for which man should live. It
follows that to the Greek thinkers the moral life
is practically identical with the rational life (in the
sense of the life in which reason performs its functions
most truly). The moral life can only mean that in
which a man does all that he does with a view to, and
in the light of, the true good. The man to whom the
true good is most constantly present in all that he does
is the best man. Thus the best life is the most rational
life, because it is that in which action and thought are
most concentrated upon, and regarded most as a means

GOOD AS SUPREME OBJECT OF KNOWLEDGE 221

to. the central principle or end of life, which is what the
Greeks call the good.

It is in this point that what we commonly distinguish
as the moral and the scientific views of life converge in
Greek philosophy. We say that Greek moral philosophy,
as compared with modern, lays great stress on knowledge
and gives excessive importance to intellect. That im
pression arises mainly from the fact that we are struck
by the constant recurrence of intellectual terminology,
and omit to notice that reason or intellect is always
conceived of as having to do with the good. Reason is
to Greek thinkers the very condition of man s having
a moral being, because, as has just been said, by reason
they understand that in man which enables him to live
for something. Their words for reason and rational cover
to a great extent the ground which is covered by words
like spirit/ spiritual, and ideal* in our philosophy.
They would have said that man is a rational being,
where we should say that he is a spiritual being. It is
true, however, that Greek moral philosophy is intensely
intellectual, and that the moral and the scientific do
tend, especially in Plato, to converge.

From the point of view of the study of human life,
we have already seen that the necessity of living for
something is due to the presence of reason in man ; and
now, turning from human action to nature as the object
of science, we find the Greeks assigning essentially the
same function to reason as before. For the presence of
reason in the world, which is what makes it possible to
understand things, means for them that every object in
nature or art contains and expresses some good or end.
The philosophy of morals and the philosophy of science
in Plato and Aristotle are dominated by what is called

222 LECTURES ON PLATO S REPUBLIC

a teleological view. In their writings intelligence and
the good are treated as almost correlative ideas ; wher
ever there is intelligence there is a good aimed at. And
this idea is not merely confined to human life, but is
applied all the world over.

We must, however, be careful not to misunderstand
this idea. We generally mean by a teleological view
of the world one which explains nature by showing that
nature has been made to serve the purposes of men.
When popularized in this crude form, teleology leads to
the notion that nothing has any purpose, meaning, or
interest, unless it is shown to be serviceable to man ;
and as our notion of what is serviceable to us is very
narrow, the so-called teleological view comes to be
an absurdly narrow and false one, against which the
scientific spirit is always protesting. But teleology in
any really philosophical sense means something very
different. Plato and Aristotle did not at all regard
man as being the highest thing in the universe, and
were therefore far from regarding the universe as made
for man. For them the evidence which everything gave
of the operation of reason lay simply in the fact that
each thing had a certain function, was calculated to do
one thing and not another, and that the various parts
of it converged to that end. If you take any complex
object (and all objects are complex), that is any object
which is a whole of parts, the only way to explain it or
understand it is to see how the various parts are related
to the whole ; that is, what function each of them
performs in the whole, how each of them serves the
good or end (re Aos) of the whole. The good or end of
the thing is the immanent principle which we have to
suppose in it in order to explain it, and which is involved

GOOD AS SUPREME OBJECT OF KNOWLEDGE 223

in calling it a whole at all. The progress of knowledge
is to Plato and Aristotle the increased realization of the
fact that each thing has thus its function, and the world
is, in Plato s phraseology, luminous just so far as it
reveals this fact.

The best instance by which to approach this view
is the simple instance of any work of art. When a man,
to take the example used by Plato in the Gorgias (503 E),
is making a ship, he does not go to work at random ;
you observe that he puts the pieces together in a certain
order with a certain end in view. The best ship-builder
is the one who puts the parts together in that order which
best enables them to serve the purpose intended. To
serve this purpose is the ship s good. The good of any
thing is to be or do what it is meant to be or do ; and
the ship realizes its good, or object, or end in sailing well.
Thus it is literally true that every bit of the ship-builder s
work is determined by the good, that is by what the
whole thing he is making is intended to be or to do.
Reason, therefore, as embodied in human art, artistic
reason, shows itself in making a certain material express
a certain good ; and the most artistic work will be found
to be that which most, in every part of it, expresses such
an end, good, or principle l . This is the teleological
view ; that view simply consists in seeing everywhere
a certain function to be exercised, a certain work to be
done, or a certain end or good to be worked out. From
this point of view the more we can detect the function
or good of anything, the better we understand it. To
a person who knows nothing about the function of a ship,
it may truly be said to be an unintelligible thing. And

1 It is the same fact that is pointed to when we say that the condition
of good artistic work is proportion.

224 LECTURES ON PLATO S REPUBLIC *

that of course is our attitude towards the great majority
of things in the world ; we wonder what they can be for,
we do not see the good of them.

This conception, then, is applied to all spheres of
existence, to nature, art, and moral life, because in all
of these there is present intelligence. It is clear how
the view applies in the case of art and morality, but it
applies also under certain limitations in the case of nature.
For in regard to nature, where he does not make but
observes, man uses the same principle theoretically, which
in art and moral life he uses also practically ; his reason
works on the same lines. Thus in regarding a plant
or an animal, he assumes from the first and unconsciously,
that it is a unity, an organism. He begins to analyze it
into parts, and throughout the process of analyzing it and
putting it together again, he is guided by the conception
of the plant or animal as a whole, having a principle
which makes it that plant or animal. An organism is
a natural object of which the parts can be seen to be
means to an end, instruments (opyava) serving a purpose.
The conception of an organism thus implies teleology.
Accordingly modern science, however much it repudiates
teleology of a certain kind, is and must be inspired by
the spirit of teleology. A book on botany, for instance,
exhibits this spirit in every page, for, throughout, the
problem which the botanist proposes to himself is to
discover the function of something (its fyyov) 1 . But

1 [In the sciences which deal with what we call, by comparison, in
organic nature, the conceptions of organism and function are of
course not prominent, but it is nevertheless obvious that everything in
nature is understood through the connexion of its own elements and by
the way it acts on and is acted upon by other things, that is by the part
it plays in relation to other elements in an ordered whole. (Cf. Hellenica,
p. 173.) The teleological view as applied to nature generally is simply

GOOD AS SUPREME OBJECT OF KNOWLEDGE 225

when scientific men repudiate teleology they are right
so far as they are insisting on this : that we must not
interpret the postulate that everything has its function to
mean that each particular thing has its end in serving
some other particular thing ; and that we must not allow
the postulate to make us anticipate the results of in
vestigation. It is one thing to say we can only interpret
nature if we suppose it to have some meaning, and
another thing to say that the first meaning we find in
things is the true one.

The view then which sees everywhere means and ends
is emphatically the view of Greek philosophy. This may
be simply expressed in Greek phraseology by saying that
the one question is, What is the good? For, to put the
matter in a summary way: the word good means that
which anything is meant to do or to be. The use of the
word implies a certain ultimate hypothesis as to the nature
of things, namely that there is reason operating in the
world, in man and in nature. This reason shows itself
everywhere in the world in this particular way, that
wherever there are a number of elements co-existent
there will be found a certain unity, a certain principle
which correlates them, through which alone they are
what they are, and in the light of which alone they can
be understood. Thus the good becomes to Plato both
the ultimate condition of morality and the ultimate
condition of understanding. These are not two things,
but one and the same principle showing itself in different
subject-matters.

To come back to human life and morality, how does
this view apply to them ? In the first place, it implies

the recognition of this fact. The significance of it will be seen later in
considering Plato s theory of science. ED.]

N. P. Q

226 LECTURES ON PLATO S REPUBLIC

that the life of human society and that of the individual
will inevitably be regarded as a certain adaptation of
means to an end, and that human society and the in
dividual soul will be regarded as organisms. Thus, as
regards society, at the beginning of Book IV, where the
question is raised whether we are making the Guardians
happy, the reply is that you can only consider the well-
being of a part when you have considered the good of
the whole. So again in Book VIII the ruined spendthrift
is described as seeming to be a member of the community
without really being so, because he is, so to speak, in
organic l . And the whole decline of human society
which Plato describes in Book VIII consists in its
gradually ceasing to be organic. It is easy to see the
bearing of this idea on virtue. Virtue is that quality
of a thing which makes it good of its kind ; that it is
good of its kind means that it does its work well ;
a morally good man is one who does his work well ;
the man who does his work well is the man who fills
the place assigned to him in the world well. The as
sumption, as regards society, is that every man has his
place and his work. And the same idea of an organism
in which each part has its place and its work is applied
also to the individual soul. The virtue of the soul is that
each part of it should do its work well ; and what the
work of each part is, is determined by the good or interest
of the whole soul. Whether any given act you do is
good may be simply tested by the question, Can you
honestly say that it contributes to the good of you takery
as a whole ?

Thus the notion of the good, in its moral application,
resembles the notion of principle. A man of principle

tv uvra ^&lt;uv TTJS ir6\fcas pepwv. 552 A,

GOOD AS SUPREME OBJECT OF KNOWLEDGE 227

means a man who can be said more than most men to
live with a purpose, or (if you like) consistently, a con

centrated man, whose acts, thoughts, and desires converge
ttTsome one end 1 . It might be said that this description
would include any man who had a strong will, good or
bad. We should reply that every man is really an
element in a world, in a society, ultimately in the KOO-/JIOS,
the intelligible order of the universe. Accordingly the
purpose which dominates his life, the good for which he
lives, will be good in itself in proportion as it serves
a wider purpose, and ultimately the purpose or good of
the order of the world. As every picture, every ship,
every man s life, everything which is an ordered and
organized whole, may be called a KoV/mos, a little world,
so the whole world, if we could see it, is the KO O-JUOS, the
one order or whole in which all the rest are organic
parts. This idea is worked out in the Timaeus, and is
the animating thought of that dialogue ; it is applied
there primarily to the physical universe, but is applicable
also to society and human life 2 , and it is so applied in
the Republic.

A man s life then is morally good in proportion as it
exhibits purpose, and not merely purpose, but a purpose
going beyond himself. It is good in proportion to its
concentration on the one hand, and on the other hand
in proportion to the amount which it embraces and the
vvidth of the interests it serves. The greater part of our
lives is practically purposeless, and it is just for that
eason that they come to so little. We have an idea
)f something of supreme value, some good, but as to

1 This is what is expressed by the metaphor of harmony in 443
). & E.
" Cf. e. g. Titnaeus, 47 D, where Ko.ra.Kitap.-qa ts of the soul is spoken of.

Q 2

228 LECTURES ON PLATO S REPUBLIC*

what it is we are c in darkness ; we do not see where we
are going or what we are doing ; and therefore most of
the means we use, most of the so-called good things
which are the immediate objects of our aims, are of little
profit to us (505 E). This is the case even with the
actions which we do in accordance with our views of
justice and honour. Hence the necessity that the
guardians, whose business it is to govern others and
to direct the moral purpose of the community, should
have knowledge of the good. A man who does not see
what is the good of justice or honour (what is the place
that it holds in the world) will not be much of a guardian
of it, for he has no firm hold of it (506 A). We see then
why it has been said that the conception of the good is
wanted to fill up our sketchy, fragmentary view of human
life, and to give it finish (aKpifcia). The more a man sees
what he is going after, the more he will see life not as
a mere outline, but as a whole with a structure and a
plan.

Further, the more this is the case with a man, thef
more his life will become a work of intelligence on his
own part, and intelligible to other people. We under
stand things just in proportion as we see the good of
them ; and the supreme good, the end to which all things
converge, is, in Plato s metaphor, the sun that gives light
to the intelligible universe. Intelligibility is the reflected
light of the supreme purpose which pervades the world
and is reflected through various media to us. Everything
in the world in its measure reveals, or is the appearance
of, the good. We may say therefore, to give a general
statement of Plato s conception, that for a man to attain
the good, so far as it is given to man to do so, would be
for him to live in the light. So to live means that he

GOOD AS SUPREME OBJECT OF KNOWLEDGE 229

should realize constantly his position in the economy
of things, in the society of which he is a member, in
humanity, in the world. And, seeing his position, he
would realize how he can best be that which he is and
best do that which he does. We see then how closely
related morality and knowledge are in Plato s mind.
This ideal of a man s life might equally well be described
as perfect knowledge and understanding (so far as that
is possible) of himself and of his own life, or as perfect
performance (so far as that is possible) of his true function
in the world of which he is a part. From both points
of view, the conception of what we call an organic whole
with a unifying principle in it lies at the bottom of
Plato s conception. On the one hand to understand the

"ii _ . ._ i - - " ~~~ ~^~~

world, or any bit of it, is to see it in the light of the
good, that is to see how the different parts of it converge
to their common end. On the other hand, to be perfectly
good is to do one s own business (ra avrov Trparreiz;),
which always means to do what, in virtue of what one
is, one can do best, and what contributes best to the
good of the whole of which one is a part.

We have seen that the good is also the end of life.

When man is spoken of as living for an end (re Aos), we

have to remember that the Greek word primarily means,

not an end in the sense of what we come to last, but

the finished or consummated work. In the case of man,

:he end is just to be, in the course of his life, in his

mperfect way what nature has given him the capacity

:o be. Thus when we speak of the good as the end of

ife we must guard against supposing that it is any single

:angible thing which a man can get and have done with.

it is an ideal which cannot possibly be attained, or it

vould cease to be an ideal. This is just as true of

230 LECTURES ON PLATO S REPUBLIC*

Aristotle s ideal as of Plato s ; just as true of the
Utilitarian ideal as of any other. Everybody means
by the ultimate ideal not wealth, health, power, or
knowledge, but always something which makes these
good to him, as is proved by the fact that nobody is
ever finally satisfied, or sits down and says, I have the
good. The difference between one theory about life
and another does not concern this point ; it lies in the
particular ways in which men conceive of the ultimate
good, and in the ways in which they connect this good
with the rest of their lives, x . i ,

The good, as we remarked at starting, is represented
by Plato not only as the end of life and as the cause of
things being understood, but also as the source of the
being of everything in the world ; it actually makes
things what they are, and sustains them or keeps them
in being. What Plato means by this may be seen from
the passage in Book IV (already referred to) where he
is answering the question whether the guardians would
be happy. If one takes a human society one sees that
it is literally true that a member of that society is
exactly what he does in that society, just as a hand or
a foot is what it does in the body. For the function
or cpyov of a thing is its being ; you cannot separate the
two ideas. If you are asked what anything is, every
answer you give describes a function of the thing. The
being of a thing is its activity. When a man ceases to
do that which makes him himself, he has really ceased
to be thac man ; if he is performing no civic function he
is no citizen, just as if you cut off a foot from the body
it is not a foot. This is the simple principle which
makes Plato say that the good is the source of the being
of things. The reality of things is what they mean;

GOOD AS SUPREME OBJECT OF KNOWLEDGE 231

what they mean is determined by their place in the
order of the world ; what determines their place in the
order of the world is the supreme good,, the principle of
that order. Thus their very being is determined by
that order ; they realize their true being in proportion
as they recognize that order ; and so far as they refuse
to recognize it they fall out of that order, and literally
give up so much of their being.

The same conception of the good appears in other
dialogues. The Gorgias has already been referred to.
In the Phaedo the good is represented as the final cause
of the world, which is what in the truest sense makes
and holds together the world ; it is contrasted with what
are ordinarily called material causes, which Plato calls
the conditions without which the cause would not be
a cause 1 . In the Philebus it is represented as manifest
ing itself in three principal forms, truth, beauty, and
proportion 2 ; but under all its aspects it is the principle
of the order of the universe. In the Timaetis, where
Plato describes in picture language the creation of the
world, the creator (tirjuiovpyos) embodies to a great extent,
in a personal and mythological form, the same attributes
as are ascribed to the form of the good in the Republic.
He makes the world to be as good as possible, because
he is himself perfectly good and therefore free from all
envy and perfectly beneficent. Further, he makes the
world as we perceive it with the senses (80^77 juer aurflrj crews
aAo yov Sofaorov) after the pattern of a world which is
intelligible (vor\&lt;rei /xera Ao you TreptXijTrroi;) ; which means
not that there are really two worlds, but that, as we might
say, the world as it is revealed through the senses is the

1 Phaedo, 97 B to 99 c. a Philebus, 64 B to 65 A.

232 LECTURES ON PLATO s REPUBLIC *

manifestation of an intelligible order 1 . At the end of
the Timaeus we find the distinction between the Creator
and the intelligible world tending to disappear, while
the sensible world itself becomes God made manifest to
human senses (#eo? aiV^ros-) 2 . As in the Republic we
are told of the good that it cannot be explained to us
in its fullness as it is, so in the Timaeus we are told that
it would be impossible to speak of the gods and of the
origin of the world in exact and altogether consistent
language 3 . The two dialogues then, in spite of the
difference in form, agree in this, that the world as we
see it is represented as revealing, though revealing im
perfectly, those intelligible principles upon which it is
really constructed, and that this system of intelligible
forms is represented as leading up to and depending upon
some supreme creative and sustaining power. Moreover,
in the Timaeus as well as the Republic, we are told that
the highest bliss of man consists in getting to be at one
with the universe of which he is a part*. In the
Timaeus the supreme power in the universe is described
in a personal way, in the Republic it is described in
what we call an abstract way. Of the two ways no
doubt Plato thought the latter truer. Though he never
hesitated to use the language of popular Greek theology
to express philosophical ideas of his own, he often lets
us know that this language did not and could not
embody the truth as it is. The form of the good in
the Republic occupies the place in regard both to morals
and to science which the conception of God would

, 27 D to 30 B. 2 Ibid. 92 B.

* Ibid. 29 B & c [where the gods is seen from the context to be
equivalent to * God. ED.]

* Ibid. 47 B & c.

GOOD AS SUPREME OBJECT OF KNOWLEDGE 233

occupy in a modern philosophy of morals and nature,
if that philosophy considered the conception of God as
essential to its system. Plato in the Republic does not
call this principle God but form. He has assigned to
a form or principle the position and function which
might be assigned to God, but he still speaks of it as
a form or principle. With this reserve, we may say that
the easiest way to give Plato s conception a meaning
is to compare it with certain conceptions of the divine
nature, for example with the conception of the light of
the world.

We may now summarize the passage in which the 54 E to
conception of the * good is introduced to us in the
Republic. Certain preliminary and more or less accepted
notions of the good are first brought forward. In the
first place everybody allows that, whatever else the good
means, it is that which gives all other things their value.
We must not think of it as a thing that can- be taken
from or added to health, wealth, and the rest ; it is
simply that in everything which makes it really worth
having ; all men, philosophers and others alike, assume
this. Plato goes on to mention two current theories
as to what is most worth having in the world. Some
call pleasure the good, holding that what we want is to
feel pleased, to get enjoyment. Others call intelligence
the good, holding that what we want is to understand
things. These two theories, which form the subject
of discussion in the Philebus, are but briefly mentioned
here. Plato simply points out where they both fall
short. Those who make pleasant feeling the one object
of life are obliged to allow distinctions of good and evil
in pleasure, and this at once introduces a standard other
than pleasure. So again those who say that understand-

234 LECTURES ON PLATO S REPUBLIC

ing is the true good are obliged to import into their
definition the very conception that they suppose them
selves to be defining ; for when asked the question, j
&lt; understanding of what ? they answer, understanding
of the good ; so that both parties are full of inconsistency
(Tr\dvr)). But amid all this inconsistency one thing is 1
certain, that people are in earnest on this matter, and that !
when they talk about the good they mean something
real. Many are found quite willing to put up with the
appearance of morality ; there the appearance has a certain
value ; but nobody would willingly put up with the ap
pearance of the good, for the good, their own good, is
what people really want. But it is just this real thing
about which they are so much in the dark ; every soul
surmises that there is something of this sort, something
in comparison with which nothing else is worth having ;
but every soul is in doubt what it is, and is without any
sure or permanent belief about it (aTropet). And this
very uncertainty makes us miss what is good in other
things ; our being in the dark about the real or ultimate
good re-acts on our ideas of the ordinary good things/
commonly so called, and makes our aims uncertain.
Certainly then, this ultimate good is the one thing about
which men who are going to govern the state should not
be in the dark.

506 B to After this preliminary survey of accepted beliefs and
5090. diverse theories, Socrates, who has been spending his
life in enquiring into the nature of the good, is called
upon to say what he himself thinks about it. He answers
that to express what is in his mind all at once would be
a flight above his power ; the utmost he can do at first
is to explain his conception of the good by an analogy :
I cannot show you the good, but I can show you the

GOOD AS SUPREME OBJECT OF KNOWLEDGE 235

child of the good. From what follows later on 1 it is
pretty clear that Plato was quite serious with the notion
that the world, as it is to human sense, is a manifestation,
a likeness or image, of an intelligible and non-sensible
order. So that the passage, which now follows, about
the sun, is not merely an illustrative simile, but expresses
to Plato s mind a real analogy between the phenomena
of the sensible world and the non-sensible principles they
exp/ess 2 . In the comparison which he draws the good

1 Cf. the passages from the Timaeus, quoted on p. 232.

3 [It is not possible to reproduce the whole of this passage as it occurred
in the lectures, and the foregoing sentences as they stand might give
a false impression of what the comparison between the good and the sun
leads to. In order to follow the main course of Plato s thought we must
be careful at first not to press this comparison at all beyond the points
which he specifically uses it to bring out. The position of the sun
in the visible universe here supplies Plato with imagery to express the
idea that the good is the source of all knowledge and the source of all
being. In Book VII the sun affords Plato more imagery for describing
the stages by which man may be led up to a clear vision of the good.
Now it is probable, as this passage in the lecture suggests, that Plato felt
it was no accident that made this imagery available for him, by placing in
the world, as seen by the eye, a visible object thus comparable to the chief
object in the world as thought could make it known. He probably thought
that, so to speak, it was part of the function of the sun thus to present
a type of the good. Compare the language used about the heavenly
bodies generally in VII, 529 c, sq., and the passage already referred to
in the Timaeus 47 A to E. But he does not develop this idea, and the
point of this passage, in the agreement of the Republic, lies simply in the
statement that the good is the cause of all knowledge and of all being.
In the following passage (the comparison of the divided line) where this
is expanded and explained, the real relation of the good to the visible
world begins to appear in its main outlines, and then of course the sun
does not play a part different from that of any other visible object. As
we make an advance in understanding the world when we turn our
attention from things as we see them to the unities or principles which
underlie what we see, so we make a further advance when we rise from
the principles which thought first discovers in the world to the ultimate
principle of all, the good. As the varying multitude of things presented

236 LECTURES ON PLATO S REPUBLIC

is said to be in the intelligible world as the sun is in the
visible. He works out the comparison of the good with
the sun through a theory of light and of vision which
was wrong, but this does not affect the points which he
wished to bring out in his conception of the good. They
are briefly these. First, the good is the source of in
telligence in the mind and intelligibility in the object,
just as the sun is the source of vision in the eye and
of visibility in its object. Truth is the reflexion of the
good ; the world is intelligible and the soul intelligent in
proportion as the good is strongly or weakly reflected.
Just as in a sense there are colours and vision without
light, so we may speak of an object and a mind as being
potentially intelligible and intelligent ; yet there is not
really intelligence and truth until the good shines upon
the mind and the world. Secondly, as the sun is the
source not only of light and vision, but also of the actual
generation and growth of the organic world, so the good
is the source not only of truth and knowledge, but actually
of the life and being of the world.

This passage then assigns to the good its position in
the world. The world as it is to sense is the image and
the product of the good, and the world as it is to intelli-

to the senses are made what they are by laws or principles which
the senses do not directly reveal, so the whole scheme of laws or
principles which thought or science discovers owes its being, and the
things of sense in turn owe their being, to one ultimate principle, the
good. Such is Plato s account of the good as completed by subsequent
passages. Looking then at the passage about the sun in its place in the
course of the argument, we might say that it is not really the sun in
particular, but the whole visible world, whether as seen or as understood
by thought, that is the child of the good in whom its image may be traced.
In the Timaeus the metaphor of paternity comes up again, and there
it is the world, not the sun in particular, that is called the child of the
creator. ED.]

GOOD AS SUPREME OBJECT OF KNOWLEDGE 237

gence is also the image and the product of the good ;
so, we might say, the whole world, whether as it is
to sense or as it is to intelligence, whether in its more
superficial or in its more profound aspect, reflects the
good.

7 XI. ] THE FOUR STAGES OF J
^~/ INTELLIGENCE . 1

[Republic, VI. 509 D to end.]

5090 to the HAVING described in a general way the position and
function of the good in knowledge, Plato goes on to
distinguish more in detail the stages of development
through which the human mind passes or might pass
from ignorance to knowledge, from a point at which
the objective world is, so to say, perfectly dark and
unintelligible, to a point at which it is perfectly lumi
nous. He represents to us by a very obvious symbol
an ascending scale of mental states and a corresponding
scale of objects of thought. Imagine a vertical straight
line, and divide it into four parts. The line must be
conceived of as beginning in total darkness at one end,
and passing up to perfect light at the other. It is
a continuous line, though it is divided into sections.
Plato, in choosing this symbol, may have wished to
express the continuity of the process which it represents.
At any rate we have to remember that there is no
sudden break between the visible and the intelligible
world, which the two main sections of the line stand for 1 .

1 There is a curious uncertainty as to whether Plato wrote av laa
or aviaa ryur/fcara, i.e. whether the line is divided into four

THE FOUR STAGES OF INTELLIGENCE 239

The scale which the four sections of the line represent
is a scale of luminousness. It is an attempt to represent
the stages through which the human mind must go if
it would arrive at a perfect knowledge of the world ;
and, again, an attempt to represent the different and suc
cessive aspects that the world presents to the human
mind as it advances in knowledge. When we speak of
the objects of the mind s thought in its different stages,
we should divest ourselves of the notion that they repre
sent four different classes of real objects ; they only
represent four different views of the world, or different
aspects of the same objects. For what we call the same
object has very different aspects to different people ; for
example, the scientific botanist and the person who
knows no botany may see the same flower as far as the
eyes go, but they understand it in totally different ways ;

equal parts, or into four unequal but proportional parts. As it is uncer
tain which he wrote, and as the line is never referred to again, it is not
worth while trying to make out what might have been meant by the
inequality of the parts. [I think it is clear that dviaa (unequal) is
the right reading. Otherwise there is nothing to show what the line
symbolizes ; for the suggestion in the lecture that the line passes from
total darkness to complete illumination is not founded on anything in
the text of the present passage, but derived from Plato s use of the
metaphor of light in the preceding and following passages. But if we
read aviaa the meaning is clear. The proportion in length between
the different sections of the line symbolizes the proportion in clearness
or in profundity of insight between the different mental states described.
Cf. Kai aoi ecrrai cra&lt;prjv(ia KCLI ucrufyfia rrpos d\Xr)\a, /c.r.A., 509 D. The
sentence is not brought to its logical completion, but it starts as if Plato
was going to state a proportion between the mental states, as, according
to this reading, he has already stated a proportion between the sections
of the line. That proportion would obviously have been : fmcrTT}/j.rj is to
Soct, in respect of aacp^vfia., what, within the sphere of Soa. seeing real
objects is to seeing shadows ; and, further, within the sphere of what
we have called firiaTrmr), vo^ais is to Sidvoia what finaTTjUT} itself is to
Mfo. ED.]

240 LECTURES ON PLATO S REPUBLIC

to the former it is the image of all botanical laws.
Plato is anxious throughout to emphasize the difference
between these views of things. They differ in degree
of superficiality and profundity as well as of obscurity
and luminousness. This means, we may regard pro
gress in knowledge as a progress from the most super
ficial to the most penetrating view of things. Hence
the relation between each higher and each lower stage
is expressed by Plato as the relation between seeing
an image or shadow and seeing the thing imaged or
shadowed. This metaphor bears a great part in his
theory of knowledge. It means that there is a great
deal more in what the mind perceives at each stage
than in what it perceives in the stage below. There
is more in the actual solid object than there is in a
mere reflexion or picture of it ; and when science comes
and says that these solid objects, which we call the real
things in the world, are not the ultimate truth, that it
is the principles which they embody which are really
worth knowing, that not some particular plant or animal,
but the permanent and uniform nature which appears
in all such things, is the object of real knowledge,
then science, though it seems to be leaving the real
world behind, tells us more than the ordinary view
of things tells us.

Through these different stages all human minds which
develop their powers of understanding fully must more
or less pass ; the most gifted as well as the least begins
by what Plato calls seeing things as images ; different
minds advance to different distances in different stages,
and the same mind advances to different stages with
different parts of itself. Plato s ideal for education is
that, recognizing this law of mental development, it

THE FOUR STAGES OF INTELLIGENCE 241

should provide for different minds by giving them,
according to the stage they are in, appropriate objects
of thought, and should lead them gradually, according
to their capacity, and as easily as may be, to the truest
view of things of which they are capable. Want of
education in this sense means that minds which ought
to have advanced further remain in a lower stage, and
mistake the comparatively superficial view of truth they
get there for the whole truth.

The four stages of mental development are called
(beginning with the lowest) etVao-ta, TrtVrts, dtcboia, and
volets (later called e7rio-r?j/x?7). The two former are stages
of what has previously been described as 6o fa ; the two
latter are stages of what has been called yywo-is or

and is later on called ^O TJO-U (a term which in
this passage is limited to the higher of them) 1 .

(i) The most superficial view of the world, that which
conveys least knowledge of it, is called by Plato etKacna.
The word has a double meaning ; it has its regular
meaning of conjecture, and an etymological meaning
of which Plato avails himself, the perception of images,
that state of mind whose objects are of the nature of
mere images (euco i/es). There is a connexion between
the two meanings ; when we talk of a conjecture we
imply that it is an uncertain belief, and we imply also
that it arises from a consideration of the appearance
or surface of the thing in question. Plato has availed
himself of both meanings of the word, so as to express
a certain character or property of the object of mental
apprehension and a certain state of mind in the subject ;
the mental state is one of very little certitude, its objects
are of the nature of images, shadows and reflexions.

1 Cf. 533 E sq.
H.P. R

242 LECTURES ON PLATC/S REPUBLIC

Why does he describe this lowest group of objects
as shadows or reflexions ? Shadows, images, and dreams,
are the most obvious types of unreality, and the contrast
between them and realities is very striking to early
thinkers, as it is to a mind which is just beginning to
think. In what respect does a shadow differ from the
real thing? It resembles it merely in the outline, and
that is often very vague and inexact ; the rest of the
real thing, its solidity, its constitution, even its colour,
vanishes in the shadow. In what respect does a reflexion
differ from the real thing? A reflexion reproduces more
of the real object than a shadow does ; its outline is very
fairly defined and exact ; the colour of the object is
retained to a certain extent ; but a reflexion is still only
in two dimensions. Any state of mind of which the
object stands to some other object as a shadow or
reflexion does to the real thing, is eiKao-ta.

This at once opens an enormous field ; but what
particular states of mind had Plato in view? We may
find an example of his meaning in the Allegory of the
Cave, the prisoners in which see only shadows of
images (aya\^ara) l . An instance of an image, in the
language of that allegory, would be the conception of
justice as embodied, perhaps, in Athenian law, which
according to Plato would be a very imperfect embodi
ment. A step further from reality, a shadow of that
image, would be the misrepresentation of the Athenian
law by a special pleader. Suppose a man believed that
justice really was this misrepresentation, his state of
mind would be eiKacria; justice would come to him

1 VII, 5170. Note that the eitcoves of our present passage (509 E) do
not correspond to the ayaX^ara of the Allegory of the Cave, but
to the shadows of the c

THE FOUR STAGES OF INTELLIGENCE 243

through a doubly distorting medium, first through the
medium of Athenian legislation, and further through the
words of the lawyer.

We may take another example from Book X, where
Plato works out this idea in his attack on the imitative
arts. The effect of arts like painting is due to the fact
that the artist puts before us not the actual thing, but
its image (tia&gt;\ov) or its appearance at a certain distance.
He puts things before us not as they are but as they
appear (the word et/cao-ta is not used, but it is the same
idea). He is so far like a man who goes about holding
up a mirror before things 1 . If any one then were so far
taken in by the perspective and colouring as to think the
picture before him the actual thing, he would be in
a state of eifccuKa. The moment a man knows that
a shadow is only a shadow, or a picture only a picture,
he is no longer in a state of ei/coto-ia in that particular
respect. But, though the arts do not produce illusion of
that simple kind, Plato attacks them in Book X, entirely
on the ground that they are constantly used to produce
and stimulate a multitude of illusory ideas of another
kind. He takes painting as the most obvious instance of
imitative art, but he applies the principle which he makes
it illustrate to words. Poetry and rhetoric are the great
sources of the kind of illusion he has in mind. The poet
gives us an image of his experience ; but, if we think we
know all about a thing after reading about it, we are just
as much deluded as if we took a picture for the reality.

1 Like the pleaders in the Allegory of the Cave he gives us a piece of
work which, in Plato s language, is two steps removed from the reality.
First comes the idea of the thing represented, beauty; then the first
copy or expression of that idea/ in the beautiful human face (the actual
thing) ; then comes the second copy, the artist s representation of that
face (the reflexion or shadow).

R 1

244 LECTURES ON PLATO S REPUBLIC

When then Plato talks of images/ he is not thinking
specially of pictures or statues, what he is primarily
thinking of is images produced by words. Sensitiveness
to the force of words is a marked feature of Plato ; and
he seems to have felt intensely the power of evil they
may have when used by a skilful sophist 1 , as if his own
great mastery over them had made him realize the possible
perversion of such skill. He looks upon language as the
power of putting images between men s minds and the
facts. He felt this about rhetoric still more than about
poetry 2 , the two being closely associated in his mind,
and both being arts of using language which exercised
a great power over the Greeks 3 .

But we must not suppose that Plato regarded the
power of language as only a bad thing, and incapable of
good. In Book III we have the metaphor of images
used in a good sense ; and we learn that it is one of the
functions of art (including both poetry and the plastic
arts) to put before us true images of self-command,
courage, generosity &c., and to train the mind to recognize
them 4 . The scholar, he says, who knows his letters must
be able to recognize them just as well in their reflexions
in water or in a mirror, and so the /XOUO-IKOS will recognize
the types of beauty and the reflexions of virtue in art.
Thus fj.ova-iK.ij is conceived in this passage as the education
of eiKao-ia, a training of the soul to read the reproductions
of reality in art aright ; it is intended to develop rightly
that side of the soul on which it is appealed to by images,
a condition of mind which is predominant in children and
undeveloped races, and in many men throughout their

1 Cf. Sophist, 234 B-E. Cf. 254 A, B. 2 Cf. VII. 517 D.

8 Cf. Gorgtas, 501 Esqq., where poetry and rhetoric are classed together.
4 401 B and 402 B sq.

THE FOUR STAGES OF INTELLIGENCE 245

whole lives. In Book X, on the other hand, where Plato
denounces imitative art and exposes its dangers, all that
he says is dominated by the idea that the artist gives us
only the external appearance of things. His general view
of art may be thus expressed : the right function of art
is to put before the soul images of what is intrinsically
great or beautiful, and so to help the soul to recognize
what is great or beautiful in actual life ; when art makes
people mistake what is only appearance for what is more
than appearance, it is performing its wrong function.

We are all in a state of euao-ta about many things,
and to get a general idea of the sort of views that Plato
had m mind when he spoke of shadows and reflexions
which are taken for realities we must think how many
views there are which circulate in society and form a large
part of what we call our knowledge, but which when we
examine them are seen to be distorted, imperfect repre
sentations of fact, coming to us often through the media
Df several other men s minds, and the media of our own
r ancies and prejudices.

The literal translation of efoao-ia is imagination. But
t would be very misleading to translate the one word by
:he other ; for, while eiKcuria expresses the superficial side
)f what we call imagination, it does not express the deeper
;ide. Imagination in English has two senses. In one
sense it really does answer to Plato s conception of seeing
mages. When we say that something is a mere imagina-
ion, or that a man is the slave of his own imagination,
ve do mean to describe a very superficial view of things.
But when we say that a poet is a man of great imagina-
ion we mean almost the exact opposite. We mean that
he appearance of things suggests to him all kinds
)f deep truth which to the ordinary person it does not

246 LECTURES ON PLATO S REPUBLIC*

suggest at all. The great poet, while it is true that he
regards things on their sensuous side, is great because
he reads through what his senses show him, and arrives
by imagination at truths not different in kind from those
which another might arrive at by what we call thinking.
Plato seems much more impressed by the possible misuse
of imaginative work than by its possible use, though he
himself is a standing example of what the union of
thought and imagination can do. And it is an undoubted
fact that we are apt to live habitually in an unreal world
in which we take the image for the reality, instead of
reading the reality by the image.

Plato s conception of the mental condition of the great
body of men is put before us in the Allegory of the
Cave ; their state is for the most part such that all that
occupies their minds is of the nature of shadows ; it is,
further, such that they firmly believe these shadows to
be real and the only reality. And in this lies their
illusion, for so long as a man realizes that the shadows
are shadows there is no illusion l . Their state is also
one of great uncertainty. Among the prisoners in the
allegory those who are honoured and rewarded most
are those who are quickest at learning to remember the
order in which the shadows pass, and who are thus best
able to prophesy what will pass next. This is meant to
illustrate how uncertain or conjectural their judgments
necessarily are. In proportion as our knowledge is not
first-hand, not derived from actual contact with things,
we ought to regard our beliefs as uncertain.

1 We must remember, however, that the degrees of such illusion as
Plato is speaking of are very subtle ; there are, to develop his metaphor,
many intermediate stages between taking the shadow as altogether real
and ceasing altogether to be misled by it.

THE FOUR STAGES OF INTELLIGENCE 247

(2) Thus etKcurta is conjecture, and the next stage,
is so called because it contrasts with ekao-m in
regard to certitude. IliVris is a feeling of certainty.
When people have themselves come in contact with
things, they feel far more certain about them than if they
had only come into connexion with them through others,
and TTLO-TLS is the state of mind in which we know what we
call the actual tangible things of life ; these are not the
sole reality by any means, yet we feel about them a good
deal of certainty.

We must remember that both tlKao-ta and mVris are sub
divisions of opinion (Sofa), so that what has been said of
it is true of them. To the state of mind called opinion
truth and reality exist under the form of a number of
separate and apparently independent objects, each with
a character and position of its own, whether these objects
are real or reflected. Whether, for instance, one s know
ledge of justice is derived from books or from what we
are told, or derived from personal experience, it is equally
true that, so long as we are in the state of opinion, the
only answer we could give to the question What is justice,
would be to point to some particular acts or laws or
institutions. Still we feel a difference when we come
out of the region in which we can only know things at
second hand, or can only imagine them, into that in
which we have to do with them ourselves. It is the
transition from uncertainty to a sort of certainty *.

Further, just as there is a good state of ctfcao-m and also
a bad state, a state which contains some truth and

The state of right opinion described in Books III and IV, with its
attendant virtue of courage, i. e. tenacity, is a state of nians. It is
a state of mind which is continually being tested by action, as contrasted
with a previous state of mind in which the soul was not in contact with
real life.

248 LECTURES ON PLATO S REPUBLIC

a state which contains none, so it is with all opinion.
It is important to remember this, for in Book III
right opinion is the sum of virtue, the virtue of the
Guardian ; so that it is surprising to us when, in Book V,
Plato begins to speak of opinion in a tone of con
tempt. Now efcao-fa is only described as a state of
mind which we have to get out of, when it is regarded
as one which we are satisfied with and accept as final ;
the harm of the shadow or reflexion arises only when
one takes it for something else ; illusion is the misinter
pretation of appearance, but the appearance which
is the occasion of illusion is capable also of being
rightly interpreted. And so with opinion generally ;
it is only so far as one believes the object of opinion
to be ultimate truth that it is a thing to get rid of.
c Right opinion, in which true principles are embodied
however imperfectly, is a state of mind which is quite
laudable, and beyond which we cannot get as regards
the great bulk of our experience. What is unsatisfac
tory in this state of mind is that it is bound up with
certain particular objects, and is liable to be shaken
when we discover that these objects are not so fixed and
permanent in their character as we thought, but depend
on their surroundings for their properties. Then the
mind is set to ask, If what I have known as justice, or
beauty, or weight, changes in this extraordinary way,
when seen in different relations, and is in such a continual
state of fluctuation, what can justice, or beauty, or weight
be 1 ?

It is this feeling or perception that the objects of 5o a
are self-contradictory which sets the mind to ask for
other forms of truth. The sense of difficulty and em-

1 Cf. vil. 524.

THE FOUR STAGES OF INTELLIGENCE 249

barrassment arising when what we are accustomed to
believe in fails drives us to look for something else.
We are impelled to search for what Plato calls forms/
principles or laws which make these various things what
they are, or for the unity which underlies this changing
and manifold world.

(3) Plato calls the stage of mental development in
which he describes us as beginning to do this, bidvoia.
The word itself gives no clear idea of the thing meant ;
it was to the Greeks what the word * intellect is to us.
Like intellect, it has no very fixed meaning, and de
scribes no one state of mind *, but it was a word obviously
applicable to the state of mind of which the scientific
man is the best instance. Plato s illustrations of biavoLa
are taken from the only sciences of his time ; and, though
there are differences, there is a great substantial simi
larity between the things he says of it, and modern
ideas of what we should call the scientific habit of
mind 2 .

Plato gives us two characteristics of this state, without
showing us the connexion between them : (a) It deals
with sensible things, but it employs them as symbols of
something which is not sensible ; (#) it reasons from
Hypotheses. Arithmetic and geometry are the most
obvious types of biavoia in both these respects.

1 Thus in Aristotle Siai/otjTiKcu aptral is a name which covers ability in
all high forms of intellectual activity, in art, philosophy, morality, &c.

2 The word is often translated by understanding, while 1/0770-1?, to
which it is opposed, is translated by reason, because these are words
which have been used to describe a lower and a higher phase of intelli
gence. Aiavoia and vorjais or fTnarrjur) stand in the same relation to one
another as * Verstand and Vernunft in Kant ; and Coleridge gave the
words understanding and reason technical senses intended to cor
respond with Verstand and Vernunft.

250 LECTURES ON PLATO S REPUBLIC

(a) The arithmetician and the geometrician, while they
use visible forms, are not actually thinking of them.
The geometrician is thinking about the triangle or the
circle as such ; he uses the circle which he draws as a
symbol of this ; and though, without such symbols, the
study of mathematics would be impossible, the circle
which he draws remains a mere symbol. Visible images
such as he uses are just the objects of opinion separate,
independent, sensible things, each with a position and
character of its own. The objects of which these real
things are symbols to him are what Plato calls forms,
such as the form of the triangle or the triangle itself,
for these two expressions are used indifferently.

What Plato here says of mathematics applies to all
science whatever. All science treats the actual objects
of experience as symbols. It is always lookings for laws,
and the sensible things around us become to it symbols
of them, or, in other words, are looked upon only as
the expression of principles ; the botanist or zoologist
has to speak of particular animals or plants, but it
does not matter to him what particular animal or plant
of the same species he takes. We express the same
fact by saying that science is abstract. The man of
science necessarily and consciously leaves out of account
a great deal in the objects he contemplates, and fixes
his attention on certain points in them. It is a matter
of indifference to the geometrician, in investigating the
relations between the sides and angles of a triangle,
how big, or of what colour, or of what material the
particular triangle is ; it may be of great interest to
some one else, but not to him ; yet all these things go
to make up the visible triangle/ In using this phrase
and contrasting the visible triangle with an intel-

THE FOUR STAGES OF INTELLIGENCE 251

ligible triangle, which is the object of the geometrician s
study, we are speaking as if there were two triangles,
and may easily be led to think of the intelligible tri
angle as if it were another triangle which is a faint
image of the sensible one. From this difficulty of lan
guage arises the greater part of the difficulty of Plato s
idealism. We must, therefore, be clear what we mean
when we speak of the intelligible triangle ; the use of
the phrase does not imply that there are two different
classes of triangles, the intelligible and the sensible ; it
means simply that there is in the sensible triangle
a property distinguishable from all its other properties,
which makes it a triangle. The sensible triangle is the
* intelligible triangle plus certain properties other than
triangularity. These other properties the geometrician
leaves out of account, or, in Plato s language, regards
as merely symbolic. The phrase, which is familiar to us,
that science abstracts, expresses just what Plato means
when he says that science treats particular objects as
merely symbolic, symbolic of something which they as a
whole are not. All science does this.

We may put this in a different way so as to illustrate
its bearing upon education. The study of the sciences
compels us to think ; it compels us, as Plato says, to let
go our senses and trust to our intellects. In Book VII
he insists upon this in the case of all the sciences he
mentions ; we have in each to set aside our senses and
their associations, and to look at things with our minds ;
that is we have to set aside all but that particular law
or principle which is our object of interest for the time
being. That is why science seems at first to upset all
our ordinary associations and to be less real than our
ordinary experience.

252 LECTURES ON PLATO S REPUBLIC

(b) Plato tells us further that diaixua reasons from
hypotheses. We mean by a hypothesis a theory tem
porarily assumed to be true, which we are prepared to
abandon if the facts do not agree with it ; a hypothetical
view would mean a provisional view, awaiting confirma
tion or disproof. But the use of the word viro6&lt;ns in
Plato and Aristotle is different from this. Plato meant
by a hypothesis a truth which is assumed to be ultimate
or primary when it really depends upon some higher
truth ; not that it is untrue or could ever be proved false,
but that it is treated for the present as self-conditioned.
The point of contact between Plato s use of the word
and ours is that, in both, a hypothesis is regarded as
conditional or dependent upon something ; but Plato s
hypotheses are by no means provisional theories, they
are the truths at the basis of all the sciences. Arithmetic
and geometry rest upon certain assumptions or hypo
theses. The ultimate assumption of arithmetic is
number, with its primary properties of odd and even.
The arithmetician does not expect to have to give
an account of this ; if any one denies the existence of
number, the possibility of his studying arithmetic is de
stroyed ; but. granted number as a starting-point (apx r i)
the arithmetician reasons from it connectedly and con
sistently, and discovers from it any particular arithmetical
truth he wants. So with the geometrician ; what he takes
as his starting-point is the existence of geometrical space
with a few of its most elementary properties. If, when
he brings a truth back to his postulates, axioms and
definitions, you deny them, he can only say it is impos
sible to argue with you ; it is not his business as a
geometrician to prove them. In the same way the
physicist starts with the conceptions of matter and

THE FOUR STAGES OF INTELLIGENCE 253

motion, the biologist with life, the economist with wealth,
the moralist with morality. These, with a few of their
most elementary forms and attributes, are the hypotheses
of the sciences concerned with them, and each science
has similarly its own hypotheses.

By calling such conceptions hypotheses, in the sense
that they depend for their validity on some other truths,
what does Plato mean ? Not that they are untrue, for
he speaks of them as a form of * being. They are hypo
theses because, if we saw things wholly and as they are,
we should see that being is one whole (a KoV/moj), and that,
as it is one whole, the various forms or kinds of it must
be connected ; whereas the arithmetician and the geome
trician treat their respective forms of being as if they
were perfectly independent ; that is, they assume them
without giving an account of them. The truths they
start from await the confirmation (/3e/3au*xris) of being
shown to be elements in an interconnected whole l . It
is thus an imperfection of SLOLVOLCL that its * starting-points
are hypothetical, that they are not seen in their true
or full connexions ; for the ideal of science is perfect
connexion and perfect explanation. And these are the
same thing. As long as you can ask Why ? the ideal
of knowledge is not satisfied. To ask Why? is the
same as to ask What is this dependent on ? Perfect know
ledge would imply seeing everything in its dependence
on an unconditional principle (ai&gt;u7ro 0eros apx*])- The
human mind, though it never reaches such a principle,
is always demanding it, and, so long as it falls short
of it, cannot attain the ideal of knowledge. This points
the way to the description of the final stage of intelli
gence, VOrjCTLS Or eTTKm^TJ.

1 See 531 D sq. and 533 B sq.

254 LECTURES ON PLATO S REPUBLIC

(4) This, as Plato describes it, is a pure ideal ; to
realize it is not within the scope of the human mind. But
it expresses his idea of what we should aim at and what
knowledge tends towards. It involves, he tells us, first,
a state of perfect intelligence with no element of sense
in it. It involves, secondly, the absence of hypothesis ;
the various principles of the specific sciences would be
seen not as hypotheses but as they really are, all natur
ally following from the fact that the world is a world
of reason, each being a step to the one above it, and
so leading ultimately to the unconditional principle on
which they all depend.

(a) The statement that in perfect intelligence there
is no element of sense perception (nothing alcrOrirov) is
difficult to understand. Probably we may explain it in
the following way. Take, by way of example, any object
regarded by a geometrician, and used by him as a sym
bol/ say a triangle. We have seen that the real object
which he thinks about is not that particular triangle,
but the triangle as such. There remains therefore
in the sensible object a great deal which is no object
for the geometrician, but falls outside his intellectual
vision. It is to him of the utmost importance that he
should ignore it, that he should not confuse what makes
the triangle a triangle with a certain size or colour.
Otherwise, having seen a triangle an inch high, when
he came to see another a foot high, he would suppose
the properties of the two as triangles were different.
In such a simple case no educated person would make
such a mistake, but in more complicated things we are
always making it, and it is because he thinks mathe
matics train men not to do this that Plato insists on
their educational value. Every political economist knows

THE FOUR STAGES OF INTELLIGENCE 255

how difficult it is, even with the best intentions, to
disentangle complex phenomena in which the actions
of a number of human beings are involved ; and in
ordinary life we are continually doing what Plato calls
mistaking the symbol for the reality. Now the other
properties of the triangular object, which are ignored by
the geometrician, may of course themselves be made
the subjects of scientific investigation. The student
of optics may investigate its colour, some one else its
chemical composition, and so forth. And so with more
complex objects ; every single property of any object
has what Plato calls a form ; as there is a triangle
as such, or a form of triangularity, so there is colour
as such, or a form of colour. Every particular object
is the meeting-point of innumerable laws of nature,
or, as Plato says, in every particular object many forms
communicate. Suppose then that different men of
science had set themselves to work to exhaust all the
properties of an object, and that all these properties
came to be understood as well as the triangularity of
a triangle is understood by the geometrician, we should
regard the object as the centre in which a number
of laws of nature, or what Plato would call forms,
converged ; and, if an object ever were thoroughly
understood, that would mean that it was resolved into
forms or laws. The fact would have become a very
different fact, a fact which, so to say, had a great deal
more in it, though none the less a fact ; the object as it
is to an ignorant person would have disappeared. There
fore in perfect knowledge there would be no element
of sense; not that anything which our senses tell us
would be lost sight of, but that every sensible property
of the object would be seen as the manifestation of some

256 LECTURES ON PLATO S REPUBLIC

intelligible form ; so that there would be no symbolic
or irrelevant element in it, and it would have become
perfectly intelligible. As the geometrician sees the
various properties of a triangle and fixes his eyes on
triangularity, disregarding everything in the sensible
properties of his symbol that could cause him illusion
or confusion, so, if he understood the whole object
perfectly, he would see all its properties in the same way.
It would not be to him a confused collection of pro
perties which seem to be constantly changing and
constantly contradicting themselves, but a meeting-point
of various permanent and unchanging forms or prin
ciples. That is to say, it would take its place in an
order or system of forms ; it would be seen in all
the relations and affinities which it has. This is an
ideal ; but we do know that everything has relations and
affinities with everything else in the world, and the only
way in which we can represent to ourselves perfect
intelligence is by supposing a mind to which all the
properties of everything, all its relations and affinities
with others things, are thus perfectly understood. This
remains a true statement of the ideal of our intelligence,
though of the great bulk of things our experience must
be always to a large extent ( sensible/

(b] In perfect intelligence there would moreover be
no hypothesis. To describe how the world would pre
sent itself to a perfect intelligence, Plato uses a figure ;
it would present itself as a sort of scale or series of forms
of existence, each connected with the one above it and
the one below it, and the whole unified by one uncon
ditioned principle, the good. The good is that on which
they all depend, and that which, to use another figure
of Plato s, is reflected in them all ; or, again, the position

THE FOUR STAGES OF INTELLIGENCE 257

and function of each in the world are determined by the
supreme purpose of the world, the good. To a perfect
intelligence it would be possible to pass up and down
this scale of forms without any break, so that from any
one point in the world it could traverse the whole. In
proportion as we do understand one fragment of truth,
one subject, we find it possible to start anywhere and
to get anywhere in it and in the subjects most closely
connected with it ; and a very fair test of how far one
understands a thing is the extent to which one can
develop any given point in it. Such a state of mind
in its perfection would be z&gt;o&gt;jcriy or vovv \eiv in the
fullest sense of the words.

And here Plato introduces a ne\y term, of which we
shall have to consider the meaning. ^The power or faculty,
he tells us, by which such a state of intelligence could be
brought about is that of dialectic (TO 8iaAeyecr&lt;9cu, elsewhere
oia/\KTiK?j). This term he eventually uses to describe
knowledge as it would be if perfect l ; and the passage
in which he then introduces it throws light on the passage
before us. Speaking of the application of the various
specific sciences in his system of education, he says that if
the study of them is to be made profitable to the end in
view we must try to see their relations with one another.
This is a principle to be borne in mind throughout the
more advanced part of the education in science which he
proposes ; the points of contact between the sciences
must be perpetually brought out. The test, we are told
later, of whether a man has the dialectical nature is
whether he is VVVOTTTLKOS, which means whether he has
the power of seeing together at one view the relationships
ao rTjres) between the various specific branches of

1 531 D sq.
H. P. S

258 LECTURES ON PLATOS REPUBLIC

knowledge 1 . Now this brings out strongly, what is
hinted at in the passage before us, that progress in
knowledge is progress in the perception of the unity
of knowledge. A man who has a gift for perceiving this
is a natural dialectician, and dialectic in the fullest sense
is simply what knowledge would be if this possibility
of seeing the affinities and communion between the dif
ferent branches of knowledge (not, of course, only the
particular sciences to which Plato refers, but all branches
of knowledge) were realized. In this use of the word
dialectic is equivalent to perfect knowledge. Later on
we shall have to consider this conception in more detail.

1 537 c.

XII. EDUCATION IN SCIENCE AND

PHILOSOPHY

[Republic, VII.]

i. THE EXISTING WANT OF EDUCATION.

AT the point which has now been reached in the vi 1.514 A
argument, Socrates says that he will describe by an *
image what is the actual condition of mankind in regard
to education and the want of it. The description is
given in the passage known as the * Allegory of the Cave.
To see the place which this passage fills in the argument,
we must recall the course of the discussion in Book VI.
It had been shown that the philosophic nature was the
gift which most fitted men to rule human society, but that
there were inherent in it certain dangers and causes of
difficulty. We were thence led to consider the question
how this nature is to be educated, and how its full de
velopment can be secured, so that it may really prove the
saviour of society. Thejmswer was that thg_jQwJ pr| g p
whichwould satisfy all jth^j^^j^emjejnt^g][ec]ucation would
be_thejknowledge of thegoodj the relation of this know
ledge to the rest of human knowledge was pointed out ;
and a sketch was given of the stages of the advance by

s a

260 LECTURES ON PLATO S &lt; REPUBLIC

which the world becomes more Intelligible and the mind
more intelligent. Now Plato turns round and asks what
is man s jactujl position in this scale of intelligence.
He is here no longer dealing with an ideal community,
but describing^J~Ore^ajg_the facts.Iab.out the human
racej^and they are ^^J^h^ they ought not to be.
So far from progrssing from dajrkness to light through
tjie_stages which_Jiave just been des^nbj^jnnenj as he
here represents them, practically remain in the lowest

ge of intelligence..

We need only notice a few points in the allegory
(514 A to 518 B). In the first place we are told that the
state of the human race at large is one of ei/cacna.
Instead of passing out of this initial stage to some truer
understanding of the world, most people abide in it all
theirjives. If any man rises out oFlf, It "1s~TTOtr~by his
own doing, nor is his liberation due to any method of
education or any help which society gives him, but it
comes &lt;/&gt;wei, no one kngwsjhip,w (5150). The^prisoners
see only shadows and hear only echoes of the truth, and
each is tied fast to his own shadowy experience. In

the~^Iew of men generally ~with "regard to
themselves and the world around them is a view distorted
by falsifying media, by their own passions and pre
judices, and by the" passions and prejudices of other

to them by language a ncLjiietoric.

And_there is no advancejn_their^ .view, they are perma
nently in the state of understanding Jn^ which ^children

jare, excptfj^^ what they

see_and hear with the force and tenacity of grown men.
This is not the state of a few miserable outcasts, it is our
own state.

In the second place, not only is this

EDUCATION IN SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY 261

tjon of men, bu^^ i^_miejmm ^hich they do not desire
to_escape. They have no idea of anything" better beyond
it, for the bonds in which they are tied keep their faces
perpetually turned away from the light, and there is no
system of education to free them from their bonds.
Moreover, the few who do get free find that^every__sjep
in their progress towards true^ kngwledge^s_attended
with_j3ajn. In the~~third place, if here and there a
prisoner from the cave does get up to the light, and
then, bejjigjilled with pity for the other prisoners, returns
to tell them what he has seen, they laugh at him and
perhaps kill him. In other words, instead of co-operating
with the leading minds that arise in its midst, society
eitner indifferent or actively hostlleTojtriem.

These are the main points to be noticed in the allegory.
The prisoner set free from the cave and gradually accus
tomed to bear the strongest light passes through a series
of stages which correspond generally to that which was
symbolized by the divided line in the preceding section
3f the argument. The stage in which he is turned round
from the position in which he was originally bound and
nade to face the light Js that in which_a_inan. Js forced
xjjface the real world and see things_as_they_are, coming
Dut of the false preconceptions_which fancy , and- hearsay
ind prejudice have made jforjiini. Thjs^js_rep_resented
is a painful process."^- The second stage is that in which

. B j~ ^ _____ **. .. -_ ------ ------ *"* """ " ...... **

le is led to take a scientific view of facts, and that too is
epresentcd as painful. It would be pressing the allegory
oo closely if we tried to find definite stages in education
-.orresponding to the steps by which the released prisoner
s led to look at the sun.

Such being the actual facts of man s condition, the
&gt;assage (518 B to 519 B) which immediately follows the

262 LECTURES ON PLATO S l REPUBLIC

allegory draws a contrast between the true theory of edu
cation and the actually prevailing theory. Education,
we are told, is not like putting sight into blind eyes, it is
Jjke turning the eye to the light. And further, it is as
if this could only be done by turning the whole body
round ; education means not merely illuminating the
intellect, but turning the whole soul another way. JFor
v//tKe~great causes of the blindness ^f the mind are the
appetites and pleasures which overpower^ the soul ;
fn^se"are^^compaTedr to_ leaden weights_jwith which the
souTls encumbered at Jjirtji, and which must be cut
away before it can lift up its eyes from the ground.

^ fcf *~^" nf i i. i , T--J-.- iTYy^-^ir, F--. .. * - * "^ " " - ^Jl

Next (5190 to 521 B) we are shown what ought
to be the relation between society and its leading
minds. The facts that have been described make
it quite natural for those who have been freed and
have got to the light to wish to stay there and to
stand aloof from the world ; for they owe nothing
to society. But the relation between society and
those who can serve it in any way ought to be just
the opposite ; it ought to be one_ofj^cjpror.a] service
between society ano!~Tts members, each contributing
tcr trTe offiier"" something that the other wants. Anc
this principle, which has already TTeen applied to minoi
matters, ought a fortiori to be applied to the relatior
of society to great minds. They should be made t(
feel that they are not sprung from their own roots, bu
owe their nurture""to society, and "are^_jlierefore bourn
to society. In a state which does give philosopher
^he nurture which they need, it will be no wrong t&lt;
them to tell them that they must rule and take ai
active part in society. They will do it willingl;
because they will feel that it is a duty which they ow

EDUCATION IN SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY 263

in return for their nurture ; and they will govern well
because they will feel that they have already something
better than any of the rewards which generally accrue to
office, for that state will be best governed whose rulers
rule, not from any wish to enrich themselves, but simply
from a sense of public duty 1 .

2. EDUCATION IN THE SCIENCES.

The question which has now to be dealt with is, How 521 B to
are we to escape from the state which has been sym-
bolized by the position of the prisoners in the cave ;
how are those who are to rule and save society to be
brought up from darkness to light? In the first place,
What are they to be taught ? Socrates begins by re
viewing very briefly the education which the Guardians
have already received. They have been trained in pov-
a-iKi) and yv^vavri.^ ; and the former of these will have
produced a sort of harmony and rhythm of character,
by means of habituation, for the soul has had the order
and beauty of the world p it before it in such a way that
it cannot but unconsciously assimilate them. But in all
this there was no learning in the true sense of the word
(f*d0?j//a). What then are the studies or branches of
learning (^atfrjjuara) by which the soul is to be led to the
knowledge of the good, the greatest thing to be learned

Here (522 E sqq.) follows the important passage in
which Plato points out that the sciences are the proper

1 Notice also (520 c) that the philosopher when first he turns back
from philosophy to the life of the world sees badly, like a man going
back from the light into the darkness of the cave ; but with practice
he will come to have a far better insight than others in practical affairs,
because of all that he has seen in the clear light. (Cf. VI. 484 E.)

264 LECTURES ON PLATO S REPUBLIC*

instruments to mediate between the state of mind which
the previous education of the rulers has produced and
the perfect intelligence which (as far as may be) they
must possess. In this passage he describes the begin
nings of thinking (W^o-ts), showing how the soul passes
from sense-perception (a to- $77 a is), and such certainty as
that can give it, to thought. There are, he begins
by telling us, two sorts of things that we perceive
by the senses, The first are objects which are ade
quately apprehended by the senses, so that they do
not provoke thought. For instance, as he says, if
we see three fingers, the perception which we get
through sight raises, as a rule, no further question ; there
is nothing in this mere perception to impel the ordinary
mind to ask what is a finger. Such perceptions con
stitute the state of mind called marts. Here what a man
knows consists of a number of separate objects (TroAAa
e&gt;cacrra), and up to a certain point the mind rests satisfied
with them, and is not anxious to find out any connexion
between them. But at a certain point the soul becomes
conscious of things like quantity, and such qualities as
hardness, softness, &c. The separate sensible object
(aiV07}ToV), which was at first regarded as a whole thing,
then seems to break up into a number of attributes,
and these are the objects that provoke thought. For
suppose we observe the size of the three fingers, or their
hardness or softness, or their colour, these are also sen
sible things, as the kind of objects previously mentioned
are, but with this curious difference, that sense no longer
adequately perceives them ; the attributes have no fixity,
and pass into their opposites ; we find the same finger in
different relations great and small, hard and soft, &c.
It is the sense of this contradiction which sets the

EDUCATION IN SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY 265

mind thinking upon the question, What is each of these
qualities which the senses report ? If each of them is
one distinct thing it cannot also be its opposite, and
when we see each of them thus confused with its oppo
site the question arises what hardness, or greatness, or
the like really is. So we are brought to the distinction
between the object of thought (vor\Tov) and the object
of sight (oparov), or of the senses generally (ala-B^Tov).
There is magnitude as seen in a separate visible object
in this confused and self-contradictory way, so that
a thing is both great and small in different relations ;
and there is the great, the small/ which is apprehended
by thought and is quite clear and definite, so that the
great is never small and the small never great. And
thus we get to the point of view which was described
as that of 8taz/oia, in which the objects with which the
mind is occupied are not the sensible things that happen
to be before one, but the various intelligible principles
which can be apprehended through the objects of sense,
magnitude, weight, and the like.

What is here said about the objects of sense corre
sponds exactly to what was said in Book V. 479 about
the objects of opinion. It applies, of course, not only to
the perceptions of simple sight or sound or touch, such
as are here instanced, but also to our perceptions of
what is pleasant or painful, good or bad, and the like.
The passage must be taken as an attempt to describe
the way in which the soul passes from a state of
unreflecting perception, through a state of perplexity
and bewilderment (airopia), into a state of more or
less developed intelligence. Sometimes, from various
causes, the mind becomes dissatisfied with the con
dition of mere opinion and mere feeling in which it

266 LECTURES ON PLATO S REPUBLIC*

finds itself. It is, of course, generally in the sphere of
morality that we first feel keenly how, as Plato observes,
the objects of opinion contradict themselves. Thus,
further on 1 , he describes the position of a man brought
up in certain beliefs about justice and honour, to whom
the questioning spirit comes, asking him, What is justice,.
What is honour ? When he gives the answer that he has
been taught, reason confutes him and shows him that
what he calls just may also be unjust. Then, unless he
knows how to deal with this new spirit of questioning,
he gets to think that there is no such thing as justice
or honour, and the commonness of this result is one
reason of the general discredit of philosophy. Plato
describes this in order to show the necessity of thatj
constancy to which the Guardians were trained while
still in the state of mere opinion, a constancy which, !
in spite of difficulties, holds fast what it has been taught,
till further knowledge comes to take its place. The
bewilderment which he thus describes as arising in
regard to moral ideas is of the same kind as that which
has been shown to arise with regard to the physical
properties of sensible objects. It is to meet this diffi
culty, in the minds in which it occurs, that the sciences
take the place in education which Plato proceeds to
assign to them. If a man has the sort of mind that
is going to think, it is most important that it should
be trained to think in the best way and on the best
method.

What has just been said of the tendency of certain
kinds of sensible objects to arouse thought has now
to be applied to the problem of education (524 D
to 531 D). The question is what particular studies are,

1 537 E to 539 A.

EDUCATION IN SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY 267

from the nature of the objects that they deal with, suited
to provoke and stimulate thought. Take first the object
with which arithmetic deals, number. We find that
every sensible object is both one and infinitely many,
like a chain which is one but consists of many links.
Thus, since unity and multiplicity co-exist in the same
thing, to sense the one is many and the many are one. Yet
if you said this to the arithmetician he would laugh
at you, and say that a unit is always a unit, and can be
nothing else. Clearly therefore the arithmetician is not
thinking of a sensible unit but of something else. Trie
same thing is shown to be true of geometry, astronomy,
and harmonics. In each the object as it is to sense
seems to contradict itself, and the object as it is to
thought is distinct and self-consistent. Thus the sciences
by compelling the mind to think, that is to disentangle
and see through the confusion and contradiction of the
senses, are or ought to be great educational instruments,
in fact just the instruments we want to facilitate the
transition of the soul from mere perception to intel
ligence ; and it is with this end constantly in view that
the sciences are to be studied.

Of the present manner in which the sciences are pur
sued, Plato speaks in a very depreciatory way, rebuking
the practice of studying them merely for what we should
call utilitarian purposes. He does not say that these
uses of the sciences are not extremely valuable ; on the
contrary, he insists more than we should on the value
of geometry for a man who is going to be a soldier;
he wishes that such men should cultivate the geometrical
sense. What he does say is, in effect, simply this:
the study of the sciences, if it be confined to the limited
objects of trade, finance, the arts, and so forth, is not

268 LECTURES ON PLATO S REPUBLIC

really educational, or educational only in an infinitesimal
degree ; and so, until people are encouraged, by the state
or otherwise, to a further study of the sciences than is
required for these purposes, the standard of education
will be very low. Useful the study of the sciences ought
to be ; but useful for what ? Plato is a thorough utili
tarian ; but, he says, trade, navigation, and the like, are
not the end of life ; the end is to do the best for the soul
you can, to make the best man you can ; and the object
you have in view will make a great difference to the
spirit in which you learn.

What, according to him, is the real value of the study
of the sciences ? It is twofold. Their first great function
is to teach us to think. Thinking means asking questions
which difficulties and apparent contradictions in our
experience force upon us. Now science owes its origin
to the fact that the soul has found such difficulties in
its sensible experience, and has felt a certain necessity
to clear them up. Science is the result of thought
exercised on sense. If men never felt in their experience
such bewilderment as Plato has described, or were
never impelled to find their way out of it, the spirit
of enquiry which creates science would not exist. There
could not be a science of arithmetic, for example, till
some one was driven to form a clear conception of unity
as apart from particular single objects ; and there can be
a science of any subject only so far as the subject-matter
can be thus clearly and separately conceived. _A11
sciences then have originated in difficulties of this kind,
anoTresult in^the solution of such difficulties. Naturally
tKerefore the sciences which already exist form the best
instruments for training the mind to think ; for in study
ing them each man s mind is led to do over again

EDUCATION IN SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY 269

what has been done by the minds that have made them.
They are embodied biavoia, representing the results
of thinking. If you want to learn to think, study the
sciences in which past thought is embodied, for you
cannot do so without being compelled to think yourself.
That, according to Plato, is the first great function of
science in education.

The most elementary airopia of all is that which
concerns the one and the many ; therefore Plato puts at
the bottom the science of number, which is the result of
thinking upon this antithesis. Next to arithmetic, the
study of number, comes plane geometry, the study
of space in two dimensions ; then solid geometry, the
study of space in three dimensions ; then astronomy,
the study of solid bodies in motion ; and, lastly, har
monics, the study of the motion of bodies as producing
sound. This is the order of his scientific course. Each
step adds something to the complexity of the subject
studied, and in each case he reiterates that, along with
simple observation by the senses, the mind has got to
be used on the subject.

As yet we have only seen the most obvious use of
the sciences in education. There is another, to Plato in
separable from the first. If their first use is that they
train the mind in thinking in general, the second is that
in studying them the mind comes gradually to under
stand certain principles or forms of being which are a
first step towards understanding the good, the principle
which governs all being. It is puzzling to us that Plato
should speak of these sciences as putting the mind on the
track of the good, and we naturally ask what the study
of number, or of space, can have to do with the final
cause of the world. The answer is that each of the

270 LECTURES ON PLATC/S REPUBLIC*

sciences deals with a particular branch, kind, or form
of existence ; that existence is one, forming a Kooyxo? ;
and that the ideal of knowledge is to be able to pass
freely from any one point in the system of existence to
any other ; so that, though number, space, and motion
are not directly manifestations of the good, and the very
abstract sciences which deal with them have no moral
influence in the ordinary sense, yet, as everything in the
world is ultimately a manifestation of the divine intelli
gence, even in these abstract sciences we are really on
the ladder which leads up to the good. Let us translate
this into modern language, such as many modern philo
sophers have used : The study of the laws of nature,
which begins with the laws of number, space, and motion,
is already the study, though in a very elementary form,
of the reason of things ; nature does everywhere reveal
reason, that is God, so that all the laws of nature are
laws of God, and even the study of number is a study of
the laws of God.

Education in the sciences has then in Plato this double
function : first, it is a sort of mental gymnastic ; and,
secondly, it introduces the mind to positive knowledge
about certain elementary forms in which the presence of
the good in the world is manifested. It is, as he puts it,
the prelude to the study of dialectic ; in it we hear
the beginning of that great music of the world which the
human race has to learn (531 D).

In Plato s treatment of each of the sciences that he
mentions, we are struck directly by the strong distinction
that he draws between those aspects of things which are
sensibly perceived and something which is not seen or
heard but thought or understood ; and we observe that
he treats the latter as more real than the former. Our

EDUCATION IN SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY 271

first impulse on a superficial reading of the Republic is
to say that Plato altogether ignores what we call observa
tion and experiment, and writes as if we could construct
laws of nature simply by thinking out certain axioms
to their consequences. We think so because, coming to
Plato with certain expectations, derived from what we
know of the methods of modern science, and with a certain
modern phraseology in our minds, we apply these to him.
Really he says nothing which has not been practically
xmfirmed in its spirit by modern science *.

The most striking examples of his view occur in his

iiscussion of astronomy and harmonics, for we are apt to

iccept what he says of arithmetic (524 D to 526 c) and

geometry (526 E to 527 D). No one denies that arithmetic

s concerned with the nature of number as such. If we said

ve saw or touched a number, we should know we were

peaking in an inaccurate way ; when we use counters for

lumbers we recognize that the visibility and tangibility of

he objects reckoned with are accidental, not essential, and

hat these objects are merely symbolical and suggestive of

lumber as apprehensible by thought. As to geometry,

vhat Plato says might perhaps be disputed. His position

imply is that the visible and tangible triangle, for

xample the diagram on paper, is not the real object of

&gt;ur thought, but a symbol suggesting the real object,

nangularity, which is not seen and touched, but thought.

"his position can not be disputed. But of course trian-

ularity in its essence, though it can only be thought, is

till the result of thinking about what we can see and

mch. On this ground objection might be taken to

1 Cf. Whewell s Philosophy of Discovery, especially Appendix B.
emember, however, that facts and theories are not opposite and
utally exclusive things, as Whewell implies.

272 LECTURES ON PLATO S REPUBLIC*

Plato s antithesis between sensible experience and thought.
He does not, however, really ignore this fact, and, if we
are to dispute whether the language which he uses is
justifiable, the whole question at issue will really be what
exactly we are to call sensible experience. When, how
ever, Plato comes to astronomy and harmonics, the way
in which he writes of them seems strange at first. He*
makes Glaucon say that astronomy (527 D to 530 c) will
have a grand educational influence, because it compels
us to direct our minds upwards ; and he makes Socrates
laugh at him for supposing that star-gazing can enlighten
the soul. He proceeds to say that a man might gaze at
the stars all his life and yet find out nothing of their
movements. Now he does not say that the truths of
astronomy can be arrived at without observing the stars ;;
and he often says that knowledge can only be arrived
at through the eyes and ears l . The question here is,
Could we ever get at the truths of astronomy by simply
looking ? Newton would never have thought of the
law of gravitation if he had not had eyes, but if we
chose to say therefore that Newton saw the law of
gravitation in the falling apple we should be giving
the word see a meaning different from its usual
meaning, and to be consistent we ought to adopt a new
phraseology altogether.

Plato goes on to distinguish the visible motions of the
heavenly bodies from their true motions, but he does not
mean that the former are, in the ordinary sense, untrue
or unreal. He contrasts apparent motion with real
motion, as we do. No one can say that simple observation
of the movements of the sun tells us the truth about them,

1 Cf. especially Timaeus, 47 A sq.

EDUCATION IN SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY 273

for no one now believes that it moves as it seems to do ;

md yet no one supposes that the simple observation that

:he sun occupies different places in the sky at different

.imes of the day is not a true observation ; it is a real

"act, it is what we see. The question is how we are

:o interpret this fact. This interpretation is an act of

nought ; we put together this simple observation and

nany others, and correct one appearance by another until

it last we arrive at a hypothesis which will account per-

ectly for them all. We all believe that the truths dis-

:overed by Kepler and Newton are truer than the casual

lotions of persons ignorant of astronomy. How are they

ruer (for in one sense every experience we have is equally

. fact and equally real) ? What Js the difference between

&gt;ne fact and another? The most real facts are those

vhich contain most, the widest and deepest ; the most

uperficial facts, mere empirical * facts, are those which

ontain least. The laws of motion are facts ; so are the

bings that I myself observe in the sky. The difference

Between these facts lies in the amount which they enable

eople who know them to say. My fact of observation

f the sun s position tells me very little about the sun ;

ut the fact of observation is not denied or ignored by

ie greatest astronomer, it is used along with a great

eal more. There is no hard-and-fast line between

mpirical facts and ultimate laws ; a fact is empirical

:&gt; far as it is isolated. A great generalization, such

s that of Newton, is a stupendous fact, it connects

nd contains innumerable facts ; it is simply a very

irge fact. What Plato says then is that the apparent

lotions of the heavenly bodies are to be used as

samples (TrapaSety^aTa) or symbols which suggest to

s to think out the real motions ; not that they
. ?.

274 LECTURES ON PLATO S REPUBLIC

are unreal, for they are not visions, or illusions, or
untrue 1 .

Harmonics (530 c to 531 c) is one of the branches of
the science of motion. Plato says that motion has
many branches, but he takes only two, the motion of
heavenly bodies which are seen by the eye, and the
motion of bodies which produce sound to the ear. Here
again he begins by laughing at those professional
musicians who think that the science of sound can be
discovered by, and consists in, what we actually hear,
and that the person who has the finest ear and is capable
of appreciating the smallest intervals knows most of the
laws of sound. Next he criticizes quite a different clas
of people, the Pythagorean theorists. The great dis
covery that musical intervals are mathematically ex
pressible was attributed to Pythagoras, but it does not
seem to be known exactly what he really discovered
or what was discovered by other Greek theorists or
music. Plato speaks with approval of the Pythagorean:
in that they have investigated the principles of harmony
but he also criticizes their enquiries as superficial. Thej
have confined their investigations to intervals and con
cords which can be heard, and for these they have fount
numerical expressions, but they have not gone on t
ask, in general, what are harmonic numbers, and wha
are not, and what is the reason for each being such
He means that, though they have worked out th
numerical expression of the ordinary intervals of th
scale, they have not raised the question what harmon

1 In the passage where he speaks of the absurdity of supposing th,
mere star-gazing will reveal the laws of the stars, Plato is very like
thinking of Aristophanes, Clouds, 171 sqq., where Socrates is represent*
as hoisted up in a basket gazing at the sky.

EDUCATION IN SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY 275

itself is, and what is the ultimate law which explains
why sounds harmonize at all. This is a question that
has exercised the minds of some of the greatest thinkers.
Here again Plato does not say, Music is trifling, it ought
to be resolved into harmonics. He does say, If you
think that, because you have a delicate ear, you necessarily
understand the science of sound, you are very much
mistaken, for no amount of listening to sounds will show
/ou the principles upon which the musical scale is
)ased.

So far, we may say, Plato understands the real prin-
;iples upon which all science is based ; his language, if
)ressed, is hardly less true than Mill s in speaking of the
ame subject. But he has expressed himself at least
n a dangerous way in speaking as if real motion were
nother kind of motion from that which we see. The
iws of motion are the truth of the motion we see.
^. person who fully understood the laws of any sensible
henomenon would, in apprehending the phenomenon
y sense, also understand it, for these would not be two
^parate acts. If he understood all the laws of the
henomenon there would, in Plato s language, be no
*nsible (that is, merely sensible) element in his appre-
ension of it, for whatever he saw, heard, or touched,
ould be to him the expression of laws he could not
or hear or touch. And yet, we may say, his thus
nderstanding the phenomenon which he had first
Dprehended by sight or hearing or touch would mean
lat he would know that if he put himself in certain
.her positions he would have certain other sensations
r sight or hearing or touch. We must therefore, in
ading Plato, guard against that sort of bastard Plato-
sm which resolves experience into two worlds, the

T 2

276 LECTURES ON PLATO S &lt; REPUBLIC

sensible and the intelligible world, of which the in
telligible world, if you ask what it is, can only b(
described as a fainter reproduction of the sensible. H&lt;
certainly often gives occasion to this misunderstanding
but he does not himself draw a sharp line between the
sensible and the intellectual ; for he constantly calls the
sensible the appearance of, the image of, the suggestioi
of, what is intelligible ; the one is essentially related tc
the other. What he does is to realize and work ou
powerfully the fact on which all science and philosophy
is really based, that it is by thought and not by simpl
sensations (as the term is ordinarily understood), or an;
amount of combinations of them, that truth is really founc
and that therefore truth is, so far, an intelligible, nc
a sensible, thing ; it is an interpretation of sense, or, a
he would say, sensible experience is a symbol of it or i
a reproduction of it, or participates in it.

The difficulty in appreciating this idea is to kno 1
what exactly is given by sense and what is arrived i
by thinking. Language leads us to believe that fin
there are certain well-ascertained facts given us b
observation, and that then we theorize on those facts
But really there is one continuous process of ascertainir
going on from the most elementary sensible observatic
up to the highest generalizations of thought, a proce
in which, in one meaning of the words, we may be sa:
to get away from sense, but in which all the time tl
more elementary facts are not done away with, but a
explained by being taken gradually into wider and wid
connexions. As Plato says that what is sensibly pe
ceived is the symbol of the intelligible truth, so \
might say that we do not see or hear the laws of moti(

1 See the work of Whewell, already referred to.

EDUCATION IN SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY 277

or sound, but that what we see and hear are parts of the
facts which those laws express. The progress of what
he calls thought or intelligence means that experience
gets more and more clear to us as we go on, the world
as it is known to us at first by the senses being very
confused. We may represent that progress to ourselves
by comparing the sort of impression which we get, if
we have no musical education, on first hearing a chord
struck, with what we experience when, by practice or
otherwise, we have come to hear the different notes
distinctly and to know the intervals between them. The
difference between these two experiences, carried out
further, may give us some notion of that process of clari-
"ying confused things which Plato calls the work of
:hought.

In any fuller enquiry into the relation of sense and
:hought everything must turn on these questions : First,
,vhat is meant by sense ? Secondly, how much do we
eally experience in sensible experience ? Thirdly, what
s the nature of the change that takes place when we
:ome to understand better the thing we have expe-
ienced? (Every one would agree in the one point of
:alling this change a process in which thought becomes
dearer.)

z. DIALECTIC.

*.*

The system of education in the sciences is a prepara- 53T
ion for dialectic (Sia\e/cri/c?j or TO biaXeyecrdai), and will 534
&gt;e of use so far as it enables the Guardians to become
dialecticians (StaAe^rtKot). There is for several reasons

difficulty in understanding what Plato definitely means
/hen he talks of dialectic in the Republic. In this,
s in other cases, and notably in that of the doctrine

278 LECTURES ON PLATC/S REPUBLIC*

of ideas, he takes for granted a great deal which he
has developed elsewhere, so that here, as often, what
we are told in the Republic is rather an indication of
his meaning than an actual account of it. Further, he
repeatedly uses the word to describe an ideal science,
and, as to what that would be, he could only give us
a general idea an idea the filling up of which must
be left to one s imagination and to the progress of the
human race. Moreover, the word is used in the Republic^
as elsewhere in Plato, in other senses besides this.

The word itself means originally the art or process I
of discourse, of asking questions and giving answers ;
it is equivalent to 8i6oVat KCU b^a-daL \6yov , to be able to
give an account of a thing to another man, and to get
from him and understand his account of a thing. This
is a standing phrase in Greek for reasoning, and bibovai
\6yov l is to give an exact definition of the thing you are
speaking of. A man who understands a thing can give^
an account of it to others, and on the other hand you
cannot give an account of a thing unless you understand
it. The faculty of doing this attracted the attention of
ordinary people in Greece, and in Aristotle it becomes
a large part of the subject of logic. The Topica is an
elaborate treatise on practical logic in this sense, logic
as used in society for conversational purposes, in the
pursuit of science, in the law courts, and the like. But
the art of giving an account of what you yourself think
is scarcely more important than the art of extracting
from others their opinions or beliefs (Xoyou 8e x&lt;r0ai or
\6yov \afj.(3dviv). To know how to put a question is
just as hard and as important as to know how to give
an answer to one ; and a process analogous to that

1 More fully \6yov rrjs ovaias. 534 B.

EDUCATION IN SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY 279

of questioning others goes on in the mind of the single
enquirer.

In Xenophon s Memorabilia, Socrates says that the
word 6iaAe yefT0at came from the practice of men meeting
together to deliberate, StaAeyozres Kara yivi) ra Trpay/xara,
laying apart the things they discussed according to
their kinds ; everybody, he says, ought to practise this
and fit himself for it, for * this is what makes men the
best men, and leaders of men, and masters of discourse
(aptoTous Kal 7jye/jioi&gt;iK(t&gt;TaTous Kal SiaAeKTiKooraVous) *. This
is the germ of the Platonic dialectic. We must re
member with regard to Greek logic and reasoning that
philosophy in Greece had its being, to a great extent,
in oral discussion. The Greeks were to an extraordinary
degree a nation of talkers ; and therefore not only elo
quence, rhetoric, and poetry, but the other arts of words,
logic in the true sense and in the sense of mere dispu
tation, were highly developed among them. Socrates
himself spent his life in talking, and that fact never lost
its effect on Greek philosophy. In Plato we get what
was the habit of Socrates life formulated as a method of
enquiry. Plato took up the word dialectic/ as one
might the word logic, and gave it a meaning which it
has never since entirely lost. It came to mean with
him, first and most commonly, true logical method in
contrast to false or assumed methods ; and, secondly, not
the method of knowledge at all, but completed know
ledge, or what we may imagine would be the result if the

1 Mem. IV. v. ii and 12. The etymology is of course strained. In
the same passage this intellectual capacity of distinguishing has a moral
side as well : only men who control their passions can see what is
best in things, and distinguish between things according to their kinds
in thought or in action ; and only they can choose what is good and
refrain from what is bad.

280 LECTURES ON PLATO S REPUBLIC

true method had been carried out completely through
all branches of knowledge.

In the first of these senses the word has passed from
meaning simply discourse to meaning discourse with the
object of attaining the truth, and this discourse may
either be carried on by words between two persons or bei
a dialogue silently carried on by the soul with itself V We 1
may ask why a word meaning discourse should be used
to signify the true method of gaining knowledge. The*
fact points to Plato s conviction that the only way to I
attain truth is to advance step by step, each step being
made our own before we go on to the next, and that for
this purpose the process of questioning and answering \
is the natural method. Moreover, his conception of
questioning and answering as the natural way of eliciting I
truth from, and putting truth into, the mind, is closely j
associated with his idea that education does not mean I
simply putting something into the mind as if it were
a box, but is a turning of the eye of the soul to the I
light 2 , or a process of eliciting from the soul what in I
a sense it already knows, a process in which the soul \
which learns must itself be active. Hence the constant
contrast in Plato between the continuous speeches of-
some distinguished teachers of his time and the conversa
tions of Socrates ; he has a strong feeling that the only
true way of communicating knowledge is to bring two
minds into contact. Thus in the Phaedrus* Plato tells
us how inferior written truth is to spoken truth, because
a book cannot answer the questions which arise in the
reader s mind. The same principle applies to the
thinking of the individual mind ; if we are to learn we

1 Sophist, 263 E. 2 518 c.

1 275 c sqq.

EDUCATION IN SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY 281

must not simply put the facts of a book into our minds,
we must question and answer ourselves.

Again, dialectic, the true logician s reasoning, is
reasoning which is in conformity with facts. It is often
contrasted with reasoning used merely for the purpose
of gaining a victory in argument (eptortK?} or amAoyi/oj 1 ).
The characteristic of such reasoning is that it reasons
according to the names of things. Plato has already
described it, in & passage in Book V, as pursuing merely
verbal oppositions 2 / and as thus opposed to dialectic,
which follows the forms of the things in question (that is,
distinguishes the precise facts which the name is meant
to indicate in each case where it is used). Thus in the
passage referred to, where Socrates is talking of com
munity of pursuits between men and women, the objector
is made to argue that on Socrates own principle
different pursuits must be assigned to different natures.
To reason thus, Socrates says, is only to wrangle ; the
person who argues so only takes the words different
nature, different pursuits/ and argues from the one
to the other, without enquiring what specific forms of
difference there are ; that is, in this case, what is the
specific form of difference between the natures of men
and women, and to what specific form of difference
in occupation it ought to lead. In what he says of
reasoning Plato, we observe, starts with the conception
of certain objective differences of kind, differences which
are there whether we recognize them or not; it is the
function of true reasoning to discover and follow them.

again is reasoning known to be illegitimate and used
designedly with the object of blinding another person for one s own
I advantage.

2 454 A " itar avro TO tivopa. SICUKCIV rov AcxfoWos "rfjV kvavriwaiv"

282 LECTURES ON PLATO S REPUBLIC

The differences embodied in ordinary language, the
terms of which form a sort of classification of things
which is in use amongst ordinary men, are often not real,
or at least not the most real differences ; they only go
a little way in. True logic is therefore a perpetual
antagonism to, and criticism of, the ordinary use of words
and the ordinary manner of discussion ; it is the knowing
how to use words rightly, that is how to use them so
that they shall conform not to the fancies of the speaker,
but to the real distinctions of things, the real system of
the world.

Plato s account of dialectic as a method depends then
upon a certain view of the constitution of the world.
Anybody s conception of the method of knowledge must
ultimately be determined by his conception of the form
in which truth exists ; men have always distinguished
between reasoning which touches facts and reasoning
which does not. And so Plato s conception of method
is the reflex of his metaphysical conception of the nature
of things. How did he conceive the world would look
to us if we understood it perfectly ? It is obvious from
many of the dialogues that he conceived it would present
the form of an articulated whole, what we should prob
ably call an organism or whole of parts in which each
part is only understood by reference to other parts and
to the whole, and every branch of which exhibits on
a small scale the fundamental characteristics of the
whole. Such being the order of the world, we must,
as the Philebus T tells us, in any enquiry, approach things
with the expectancy of finding such an order. The
nature of reasoning, as Plato conceives it, is determined
by this characteristic of the material it deals with ; it

1 16 c to D.

EDUCATION IN SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY 283

must conform itself to that material. So in the Phae-
drus 1 he illustrates the nature of discourse (Ao yos) by
the metaphor of a body, and again in the same dialogue
he compares the bad reasoner to the bad cook who cuts
across the joints instead of following the natural articula
tion of the body. Thus the idea of the world as an
organic whole gives his theory of knowledge its most
prominent characteristic 2 .

He himself expresses his leading idea by saying that
all knowledge has to do with the one in many and the
many in one. This is a technical expression of the idea
of organism ; for every organism is one in many ; each
part can only be conceived with reference to the whole ;
the whole is present in the parts ; to understand it we
must give attention not to the one alone, nor to the
many alone. In the Philebus 3 , where this idea is most
worked out, Plato remarks that the fundamental fact
from which dialectic springs is the co-existence of unity
and multiplicity in all things. Wherever we take the
world it is a one in many; wherever there is something
of which we predicate being, we always find that more
than one thing may be predicated of it ; and everything
either is a particularized form of some generic form,
principle, or law, or, if it is itself an abstract principle
or property of things, exists in a great many different
instances, though maintaining its unity throughout them.
(We have already met with this conception in Book V.)
The method of learning about things must therefore be
one which recognizes this fundamental fact. Accord
ingly dialectic, in the sense of the method of knowledge,

1 264 c.

2 Cf. Phaedrus, 265 c sqq., 273 D sq., 276 E to 277 c.

3 14 c to 18 E.

284 LECTURES ON PLATO S REPUBLIC*

will be a double process consisting of combination and
division (uvvay&yri and 6iai/)ecn?) 1 . This means that, as
any truth will always be found to be a one in many, the
way to realize it will be either, starting from many
instances of it, to arrive gradually at the unity which
pervades them all (this is (rwaywyrj), or, if you start with
the one principle or law, to see how it can be divided up
into its many instances (this is biaipeo-is).

Under this simple form we recognize what, from
Plato s time onward, have been held to be the two
sides of all scientific method. In inductive reasoning
you start with a number of different instances and en
deavour to find one constant principle, the law of them ;
this answers in principle to combination. In deductive
reasoning you start with a given conception or fact and
follow it out in its particular applications or occurrences,
seeing how the general principle applies to a new case,
or, in Plato s phrase, how the one particularizes itself
in c the many ; this answers in principle to division.
In combination we have the exercise of the same gift
that we have already seen referred to as seeing together
(a"uvo\l/Ls) 2 . Atatpeo-t?, though the word itself is not used
in the Republic, is the method that the true reasoner was
said to follow in Book V in the passage already referred
to, where the failure of the contentious reasoner is said
to be failure to distinguish properly the different kinds
of the same thing. Combination is shown primarily
in collecting the form out of the many objects of
sense, and division in seeing how the * form appears
in a number of different objects of sense. For the many

1 Phaedrus, 266 B.

3 In the Phaedrus (265 D) Plato uses avvopav, to see together, as an
equivalent to owdyiv, to bring together.

EDUCATION IN SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY 285

(/roAAa Kaora), the multitude of particular instances of
the one, mean in the first instance the objects which
the senses present to us. And forms are primarily
spoken of as elements of unity in a multiplicity of
sensible things. But it is important not to overlook
the further application of the same principle which is
implied in the Republic ; each form is itself related to
other forms, and ultimately all the forms of things are
connected together and make one system.

Thus when Plato describes the perfect reasoner as one
who, starting from any single form, could pass up along
the ladder of forms to the ultimate unconditional prin
ciple on which all depends, and could descend in like
manner, the ideal of science which he describes is simply
the result of his conception of logical method. True
reasoning, in all cases, consists in the union of combina
tion and division ; and to do both completely, to see
the many in their unity and the one in its multiplicity
completely, would be to have a perfect knowledge about
the world. All wrong reasoning is the failure to do
either the one or the other. Plato tells us in the Philebus
that most people either pass too hastily from unity to
variety, that is from a general principle to a particular
case, or generalize too hastily from a number of instances
to one principle.

This logical method may be variously applied to the
discovery, the communication, or the definition of truth
(eupiVKety, 8i6a0-/ceti , bpL^eiv) ; and these are the three
main applications of it that we find considered in Plato 1 .
In the attempt to discover truth, the expectation as to
the truth with which the enquirer starts makes a great
difference, and the main point for him to bear in mind as

1 For its application to teaching cf. Phaedrus, 276 B sq.

286 LECTURES ON PLATO S REPUBLIC*

to the method of discovery is that he must never be
satisfied with what he thinks he has discovered until he
has shown all the differentiations of the single form or
principle which he thinks he sees exemplified in the case
before him, nor until he has brought all the particular
instances of it into unity 1 . The power of defining things
(Koyov Kdcrrov Xappavtiv rrjs tikrtas) is made a prominent
characteristic of the dialectician in the Republic. Defini
tion plays an enormous part in Greek philosophy ; to
be able to define things was its ideal. How then does
definition connect with this conception of method?
Anything we wish to define will necessarily be found
to be a certain specific form of one or more generic forms
or principles. To be able to define it, that is to have
an accurate conception of it, is to be able to see exactly
what modification it is of what form or forms. Merely
to know that a certain act, for example, is a good act,
is not to have a definite conception of it ; to have an
adequate conception of a good act we must see exactly
in what sense it is good, or how, in the particular circum
stances of the act, good is best realized. We might say
that definition consists in assigning to the particular
its position in reference to the principle of which it is
an instance. Dialectic, Plato tells us in the Republic*)
is the method, and the only method, which attempts
systematically to arrive at the definition of any given
thing. The process of defining a given thing is there
(implicitly) represented as consisting in taking it away
from, and holding it apart from, every other thing with

which it is combined or to which it is akin 3 . But this

process of abstraction is only the other side of the process
of concretion, which sees in what ways a given form or

1 Philebus, 16 D. 2 533 B. 3 534 B sq.

EDUCATION IN SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY 287

principle is in fact combined with others. We are some-
limes told that modern science aims at the classification,
or again at the explanation, of things, whereas the Greeks
aimed only at defining them. But to explain anything,
or to classify anything, is to assign it its place in the
scheme of knowledge, and to define it is the same.

In the latter part of Book VII, in a passage already
referred to, Plato dwells on the dangers of dialectic. He
describes in a graphic way the effect produced on the
mind in youth by the first taste of logic, which is that
the young man goes about proving that every thing is
something else. Plato connects these first beginnings
of thinking, which are the beginnings of dialectic, with
the first perception of the curious fact of the co-existence
Df one and many. This is to him the natural way to
describe the awakening of speculative thought. We have
ilready seen that he describes thought 1 as beginning with
:he perception that the same thing is not the same, or
:hat one is also many. All through Plato we find that
:his old logical problem is that around which all his
:onceptions of method hang. It was the first form in
A^hich any metaphysical question forced itself on the
luman mind 2 .

We may now pass to dialectic as completed science.
This is a sense of the word which is more prominent in
he Republic than in other dialogues. The conception
las already been discussed in reference to the passage
it the end of Book VI, where Plato defines vorja-is 3 , or
nought in the fullest sense, as distinguished from biavoia.
dialectic, as completed science, is the result which would
)e obtained by the method we have been speaking

if in the wider sense as opposed to
2 Cf. Philebus, 15 D sq. 3 vorjais as opposed to Sidvoia.

288 LECTURES ON PLATO S &lt; REPUBLIC

of, if it could be fully carried out. We often hear
method and result spoken of as if they were two
mutually exclusive conceptions. Is philosophy, we
are asked, a method or a result ? It is a result, for
as we advance in philosophy we are conscious of
attaining something. But at the same time we are
compelled to say that no result in knowledge is final,
and therefore knowledge is a perpetual method ; and
we may add that the methods of knowledge change
and are modified by every fresh step in knowledge.
Between Plato s conception of perfect knowledge and
his conception of the method of attaining to know
ledge there is a very obvious correspondence. Perfect
knowledge would be a state of mind to which all things
presented themselves as a perfectly connected order
an order in which every part down to the smallest
detail had its proper place, and was seen by the mind
to be eventually connected with every other part and
with the principle which makes them all one. Now
dialectical method applied to the discovery of truth
means coming more and more to see not only that
things are one in many, but how they are so ; the
dialectical view of things is that which studies them
with a constant regard to their mutual relations 1 .
Let us suppose a method like this worked out to its
completion, and we get dialectic in its sense of com
pleted knowledge. This of course would not be brought
about merely by what we call a logical process in the
ordinary sense ; it would only be possible if the whole
world of facts lay open to our observation. Dialectic

1 Sophist, 253 B sq., may be referred to, together with the passages
already referred to in the Philebus and the Phaedrns, as throwing
light on Plato s practical conception of dialectic.

EDUCATION IN SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY 2

therefore is not a branch of science existing alongside
other sciences. The word may be used either of a uni
versal method to be applied, differently in different cases,
to all the questions with which human thought is con
cerned, or of an ideal science which is the system of
all the sciences, an ideal which can only be realized
to a slight extent, but which nevertheless describes the
end towards which the progress of human knowledge
works 1 .

4. PLAN OF THE WHOLE COURSE OF EDUCATION.

We have described the studies which the Guardians 535 * to
must go through, and it remains to say what place they
are to take in the course of the Guardians lives, and
who are to be chosen to enter upon each successive
stage of study. Plato begins by enforcing again the
necessity of choosing, to be rulers, men who combine
the two complementary qualities of constancy and of
intellectual quickness (/3e;8aioYr?y and S/n/ztfn]?), telling us

i that hard intellectual work, such as they will have to
undergo, will require of them more courage even than

| hard physical exertion. He dwells upon the evils
which result from choosing what he calls cripples

[ :o be leaders in the state. By a * cripple he means
person who is one-sided, or not developed on all

1 [The concluding sentences of the discussion of dialectic may here be
loticed. Having hitherto spoken of it in language which suggests that
ie is occupied only with a remote ideal, Plato suddenly changes his tone
.nd makes Socrates appeal to Glaucon to educate his sons as dialecti-
ians. They are to be educated in dialectic because they may be called
,pon to deal with important public affairs ; and dialectic is described
imply as the art of asking and answering questions most intelligently
&gt;r scientifically. ED.]
N. F.

290 LECTURES ON PLATO S &lt; REPUBLIC

sides of his nature. One form of this one-sidedness
is to like athletic exertion but hate intellectual toil ;
another is the reverse of this. Yet another such defect f

of nature is insufficient care for truth ; it is not enough 1
to put what Plato says in modern language to have j
what is ordinarily called a truthful nature, a man must
have that love of truth which makes him not only hate
to tell a lie, but hate to be the victim of false ideas 1 .
These and other requirements Plato sums up by saying
that the Guardians must at the outset be sound in limb
and sound in mind. He concludes with a characteristic
apology for the earnestness with which he is speaking.

Those who are to go through the advanced course of
study that has now been proposed must begin their training
young, and even their first studies are to be as little
compulsory as possible. Up to the age of about seven
teen or eighteen the education of /aouo-i/cTJ described in
the earlier books will go on ; and in addition the ele
ments of the sciences will be learnt, but without system
(X$&gt;TJZ&gt;). After this will come a course of exclusively
gymnastic training, lasting till the age of twenty.
This means a systematic bodily training, including
military exercises, and directed towards preparing the
young men for the service of the state in keeping order
at home and in fighting against foreign enemies. It
serves the further purpose of giving them a good foun
dation of bodily health for their future work, and of
training them in courage and self-control. It will be
so hard that they cannot at this period do any intel
lectual work ; but, says Plato, what a man shows himself
to be at his gymnastics will be a very good test of his
general character. At the age of twenty, a further

1 Cf. 382 A sq. and 412 E sq.

EDUCATION IN SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY 291

selection will be made of those who have distinguished
themselves most, and these will be advanced to the
next stage of education. This will consist of two parts.
There will be a systematic scientific course continuing to
the age of thirty ; and, while they are occupied in this,
the great point to be attended to will be whether they
show the faculty for dialectic, the power of seeing things
together (arvvotyis) . But alongside of this a training in
the public service, chiefly military, will be going on ; and
here the chief test to be applied to a man is whether he
is steadfast (novipos) and shows constancy to the principles
he has been taught. At the age of thirty, a further
selection will be made. Those who are now approved
will enter upon the study of dialectic proper, which will
continue for five years, unaccompanied by any other
work. (Probably this is meant to include a study of the
principles of morality and human life ; for it is in this
connexion that Plato describes the dangers of dialectic
for those who are not fitted for it by the tenacity with
which they hold fast to the principles of right that they
lave been taught *.) At thirty-five begins the really
serious work of the public service, and it lasts for fifteen
/ears. During these years the Guardians will be ac
quiring the experience (eiweipia) necessary for rulers by
i ictual contact with the various forms of good and evil
ibout which they have been taught ; and all the while
:hey will be continually tested to see if they stand
&gt;eing * pulled about in all directions by the circum
stances with which they have to contend. From fifty
mwards, those who are still approved are, alternately,
o study the good itself, and in the light of it to govern
id organize the state. They will be the supreme

1 Cf. Phaedo, 90 B and c.

u a

292 LECTURES ON PLATO S REPUBLIC

council in the state, dividing their time between theo
retical study of the good, and practical government.
Finally, when they die, they will be buried with public
honours, and worshipped, if the Delphic oracle allows,
as divine beings (5a^oi&gt;es), or at any rate as blessed and
favoured by the gods (evlai^oves).

The actual machinery of this scheme is the least
important part of it, nor is it of any use to enquire
whether it is practicable, for Plato himself only professes
to be describing an ideal state. The question is, What
substantial truth is there in it for mankind, and in what
sort of way could we appropriate Plato s principles ?

n There are three important ideas in his system of edu-
jation. Hirst, there is the idea that education must
meet all the demands that human nature brings with it.
Seccmdly, there is the conception that as long as the human
soul is capable of growth the work of education ought to
go on. Education should be co-extensive with life, for
education simply means keeping the soul alive ; it is
only by a concession to human nature s weakness that it
is supposed to be restricted to the first twenty-five years
of one s life. Thirdly, the great organs of education are
all those things whidh human nature in the course of its
growth has produced ; religion, art, science, philosophy,
and the institutions of government and society are all to
be enlisted in the service of education. Here we see how
utterly remote from Plato is the idea that there can be
any contest between art and science, between study and
practical life, or between any of the great products of the
human mind ; he uses all as links in one chain.

Though Plato spends so much time in the Republic
upon the higher branches of education, he is really con
templating them as intended only for a very few men ; he

EDUCATION IN SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY 293

thinks that the bulk of those who are educated would
stop their education about the same time as we do now.
It is only the small number who ultimately rule the
state who go through the complete course. No one can
doubt that, if it were possible to do something in his
spirit for the training of the most influential people in the
state, modern government would be considerably better
than it is, for, if the function of government is the hardest
and highest of all, it clearly requires the best training
and the best instruments.

XIII

SUCCESSIVE STAGES OF DECLINE
OF SOCIETY AND OF THE SOUL

{Republic, VIII and IX to 576 B.]

WE may say that Books II to VII of the Republic
put before us a logical picture of the rise of the human
soul to what Plato conceived to be its highest capa
bilities, while Books VIII and IX give a similar picture
of the fall of the human soul to what seemed to him the
lowest point consistent with its remaining human at all.
The first of these pictures shows us how man may
rise to a level where he is very closely akin to the divine
nature, the second shows us how he may fall to a point
where he is almost on a level with the brute. We called
the first a logical picture because Plato, in describing
a perfect state, or certain stages in the process of form
ing a perfect state, writes throughout as if one stage of
that process succeeded another in an historical order 1 ;

1 [The first stage is the avayrcaioTaTi] n6\ts, i. e. the state containing the
barest essentials of a healthy state, described in II. 369 B to 372 E. The
second is that described from 372 E to the end of IV. The third, that of
V to VII, which he speaks of (in 543 D) as a state distinct from and
better than that of II to IV. ED.]

DECLINE OF SOCIETY AND OF THE SOUL 295

whereas we know all the time that the process is abso
lutely unhistorical, and that he does not mean that any
state has grown up in this way. The real order of the
development he describes is a purely logical order, based
on his psychological analysis of the main elements in
a perfectly developed society. The appearance of his
torical order is still more striking in Books VIII and IX,
in which the picturesque element is so much more pro
minent that some commentators have taken Plato to be
describing the actual evolution of Greek political society,
and have criticized him seriously upon that ground,
pointing out that the various forms of government he
speaks of did not occur in the order he describes l .
Nothing is easier than to show this, but it is quite
inconceivable that Plato should have been ignorant of
such elementary facts. If we look closer we see that
here too the order of arrangement is logical and psycho
logical. The question he puts before himself is this:
The human soul being as we have described it, and
having in it a certain capacity for evil as well as for
good, what would it come to, and through what stages
would it pass, if its capacity for evil were realized
gradually but without any abatement ? In actual
human experience there is always some abatement ;
there are always counteracting circumstances which
prevent any one tendency working itself out in isolation
and unhindered ; but the philosopher may, as Plato here
does, work out the result of a single tendency logically.
These books therefore put before us an ideal history of
evil, as the previous books put before us an ideal history
of good.

Plato has undertaken in the Republic to explain human

1 Aristotle (Politics, 1316 A and B) criticizes Plato on this ground.

296 LECTURES ON PLATO S * REPUBLIC *

life psychologically (that word being taken in the widest
sense). He has here to interpret in this manner Greek
history and Greek life. He has asked himself, How can
we show that the various forms of Greek life are trace
able to the working of certain forces in human nature?
To do this he has ransacked Greek life to find material,
and has concentrated in these books a most extraordinary
knowledge of human nature in general and of Greek
nature in particular. Each of the constitutions of society
which he describes is really an expression of the domi
nation of a certain psychological tendency which, if
unchecked, will inevitably produce certain results in
society and individual life. In modern times an en
quirer with a similar object might ask what in its
essence is the democratic spirit ; having defined it, he
might then go on to ask how in the various so-called
democracies of the world this spirit has manifested itself;
and he would not confine himself to democracies alone,
he would find democratic elements in countries in which
the government is not strictly democratic. If he then
put together into a picture all the material he had
collected, it would answer to no actual form of demo
cracy, but it would give in a concentrated shape what he
conceived to be the general effects of the democratic
spirit. This is the method which Plato has followed
here.

What are the tendencies of which Plato traces the
working? His conception of the soul is the same that
has been unfolded in Books II to IV. (The soul is one
thing, but it is also triple ; its normal, natural, and ideal
condition is that in which each one of its three elements
contributes its proper work to the economy of the whole.
Further, this condition of the soul involves society, for

DECLINE OF SOCIETY AND OF THE SOUL 297

the soul reaches out to other souls at every point. An
ideal community of souls would be one in which the
capacities of every individual soul were fully developed
and its wants fully satisfied J This would be the case if
the philosophic element in man ruled, because this is the
element in him which is capable of understanding his
true interests, and of living for those interests that is,
living a common life. Any other organization than that
in which the philosophic element rules is necessarily, in
its degree, imperfect, and is one in which the relative
position of the elements of human nature is not normal.
The progress of evil is therefore a progress in disorgani
zation ; that is to say, as it goes on, different organs or
elements of society or of the individual soul come more
and more to perform their wrong functions. What
Plato calls timocracy, the first stage in the downward
progress, is that state of life in which the spirited*
element dominates ; the philosophic element is not
thereby eliminated, it simply sinks to a lower level and
performs functions not its own, becoming the servant of
spirit. The next logical step is taken when appetite
becomes dominant, and spirit and reason fall into the
position of its servants and instruments ; this is olig
archy/ which makes the satisfaction of material wants
the end of life, but preserves a certain external order
by subjecting the crowd of appetites under the rule of
one. The next step downward is within the region of
appetite ; freed from the domination of the desire for
wealth, the appetites struggle promiscuously for the
mastery, till a sort of temporary equilibrium without any
principle is effected between them ; this is * democracy.
The last step is taken when this equilibrium of appetites
passes into the absolute despotism of the lowest or of

298 LECTURES ON PLATO S REPUBLIC

several of the lowest that is to say, the least compatible
with the common life of society, the most selfish ; this is
tyranny.

In the picture given of each of these stages we must
understand the relation between the individual man
described and the community described. Plato de
scribes the man and the state as they are, and also the
process by which they came to be what they are. In
each of these accounts the individual represents the
inner psychological condition which, if sufficiently domi
nant in a state, will give it a certain character or bring
about in it a certain change ; but he does not intend to
imply that such an individual can exist only in a corre
sponding state. Take oligarchy, for example. The
individual oligarchic man is one who is dominated by
the principle of seeking material wealth ; he is oligarchic
so far as he consistently lives for the accumulation of
wealth. Suppose a large number of such men get
together in any society and are backed by a certain
amount of force, you will inevitably get a political
oligarchy based on wealth. Such men will naturally
try to rule the rest, and the ruling principle in themselves
will direct them to form a constitution in accordance
with itself. An oligarchic state is thus the oligarchic
principle in men writ large. But there may of course
be many oligarchic men in society without the govern
ment being an oligarchy. In the same way we must
interpret Plato s descriptions of the transitions from one
of these types to another. As has been said, he does
not give them as historical accounts of how any parti
cular Greek constitutions arose. He has taken certain
salient features in the history of a number of individuals
and a number of societies, and compounded them

DECLINE OF SOCIETY AND OF THE SOUL 299

together into typical cases made to illustrate a cer
tain principle in the clearest way. His account, for
instance, of the transition from oligarchy to democracy
means that, if you get a state of society in which
the pursuit of wealth is the absorbing object of life
to the leading people, then it is only a question of time
for that tendency to sap the strength of the community
and substitute for it a lower form, and that a similar
degradation is inevitable in the case of individual men or of
families when once they have come to regard wealth as the
chief aim in life. In each picture all the traits described
are symptoms of a psychological change going on within;
and all the details are worth studying. These Books
have been called the first attempt to construct a philo
sophy of history. A philosophy of history implies that
the historian can see certain laws or principles of which
human history exhibits the working. Plato has taken
certain inherent tendencies of human nature, and inter
prets Greek history in the light of them ; not that the
tendencies he describes were actually working alone, so
that historically events could exactly correspond to his
description, but that wherever he looks in Greek society
he sees symptoms of them working underneath.

Plato arrives finally at the exact reverse of what he
has pictured as the ideal good state of man and society.
The best man would be one whose self was as
nearly as possible identified with the life of the society
of which he was a member, and ultimately with the laws
or order of the world of which he, and the society also,
were parts. Men never completely accomplish this
ideal, but they are actually good in proportion as they
accomplish it ; the test of a man s goodness and of his
greatness is the extent to which he can lead a common

300 LECTURES ON PLATO S REPUBLIC

life (not necessarily in the most obvious way of doing
so 1 ), or can identify himself with, and throw himself into,
something not himself; and this applies to men of the
meanest station as well as to the philosophic statesman.
Accordingly the worst man in the world is the man who
is most limited and selfish. Plato s typical tyrant,
who embodies the tyrannical principle, satisfies at all
costs one of the poorest of his appetites. Supposing
such a person in circumstances which are not favourable,
he remains the * tyrannical man/ the slave of a despotic
passion. But supposing him to find a favourable environ
ment, and supposing him to have this passion strongly
enough, he becomes a full-blown tyrant, just as the
philosopher, if he finds a state that is fit for him,
becomes a king, a constitutional ruler. The tyrant is the
exact counterpart of the philosopher. The philosophic
king is at one with everybody and everything about him.
The tyrant his personality concentrated in a single
dominant passion is absolutely alone ; he is the enemy
of his own better self, of the human kind, and of God.
Theoretically the owner of the state, in reality he is
absolutely poor.

Throughout the downward course by which this
lowest condition is reached, the end which men set
before themselves in life becomes gradually less and less
worthy of human nature ; and, as it is with the end in
life, so it is with the various parts of life which work for
this end. At each step the true principles of education
are more and more neglected, and the soul fails more
and more to find its proper nurture.

545 c to The account of these various stiiges of decline begins
with the fall of the ideal state. How does decay first set

1 Cf. Section X. p. 227 of the Lectures.

DECLINE OF SOCIETY AND OF THE SOUL 301

in in the perfect state ? In asking this Plato really has
before him the general problem of the origin of evil
the question, how does it come about that the world is
not so perfect as it might be ? But the transition from
the ideal society to timocracy is related as if it were
an historical event. It is impossible to say whether Plato
thought there actually had been forms of human life
much more perfect than existed in Greece in the times
of which he knew. He certainly saw in what he believed
to be the best forms of society in Greece some imperfect
approximations to what human society might be, but we
need not suppose that he thought any more perfect
approximation to it had gone before these. Having
formed his own ideal conception as a standard of criti
cism, he naturally represents the types of existing society
which he is going to judge as so many removes from it ;
but this does not imply a serious belief in the existence
of his ideal. He is however quite serious with the idea,
which he here expresses, that no human institutions,
even the most perfect, can be permanent. Can our
present European civilization permanently progress, or
permanently exist? Can any national life go on without
decay ? these are analogous questions to that which
was in Plato s mind.

The cause of decline in any society must, he asserts,
be division and faction (ora&lt;ns) among its rulers. As
long as they are of like mind, it is impossible for the
society to break up. So much is clear, but we must
call on the Muses to tell us the beginning of divisions
in our ideal state. This is an example of a way of
speaking, half serious, half humorous, which Plato uses
when he comes across a question that cannot be scienti
fically dealt with ; in the same way he adopts the Ian-

3 02 LECTURES ON PLATO S REPUBLIC

guage of mythology or poetry when he is speaking of
the ultimate destiny of the soul. Let us suppose,
he says here, that the Muses are speaking to us jest
ingly, as if we were children, and in language of mock
solemnity.

The principle at the foundation of the answer given by
the Muses is that everything which has come into being
is liable to cease to be. Therefore human society, which
has come into being, however well it may be knit together,
is subject to dissolution. And what form will the disso
lution of this society take? Here another general law is
enunciated, applying to all organic life, or, as he says,
to everything in which soul and body are united. All
organic things have predestined periods, longer or shorter
according to their nature, upon which their inherent
vitality and power of reproducing themselves depend l .
At certain intervals the vitality of souls that are in human
bodies becomes feeble and the soul is comparatively
unproductive. If a number of children are produced at
such times they will form an inferior race, and society
must decline. The number which Plato now gives in
an enigmatic way expresses the periods at which these
critical moments occur. We need not attach any im
portance to the particular number ; the passage expresses
Plato s belief that there are fixed laws governing this
matter, which are capable of being definitely stated.
But, he says, however wise the best minds of a society
may be, their intelligence is necessarily alloyed with
sense ; hence they will not perfectly understand the

The notion of fixed recurring periods of fatal importance to the soul
is found in various forms in Poltit cus, 269 c sqq. (especially 272 D and E) ;
Phaedrus, 248 A to 249 D ; Laws, X. 903 B sqq. ; Timaeus, 42 B-E ; and
Republic, X. 617 D,

DECLINE OF SOCIETY AND OF THE SOUL 303

laws of human generation, and owing to their mistakes
children will inevitably be born who are inferior to their
parents ; and, when the decline has once set in, it will
inevitably increase. Thus the decline of human society
is brought about by its failure to understand the laws
of its own life.

Plato has anticipated the notion that a human society
is in some sense an organic thing, having its own laws
of growth and decay. He offers no evidence for what
he says, but his fundamental idea, that there are unknown
conditions favourable and unfavourable to the mainte
nance of the vigour of a race, has remained to the
present day. It still seems to many natural to suppose
that every decay of a nation is caused by some loss of
vital power, and that there are laws, however undiscover-
able they may be, upon which the loss or maintenance
of that vital power depends.

Society then will inevitably fall away from the ideal 547 A to
state ; at any rate the best forms of existing society are 5f
a compromise between that which is highest and that
which is lowest in human nature. What are the par
ticular symptoms of imperfection which even the best,
timocracy 1 , exhibits? Its inherent imperfection shows
itself, when judged by the standard of the ideal state,
in two main points. The first is the institution of private
property in the possession of the ruling class ; the second
is the fact that those who are ruled are regarded as the
subjects and slaves of the rulers. The first of these
defects does away with the perfect identity of interests
between the rulers and the state. The second destroys

Timocracy means here the state in which honour is made the
dominant motive of action. It is used in quite another sense in
Aristotle, Eth. Nic. VIII. x. i.

304 LECTURES ON PLATO S REPUBLIC

the relation of perfect co-operation and give and take,
which ought to exist between the different classes of
the community. Those who are ruled should regard the
ruling class as their protectors and saviours, and the
rulers should regard them as the friends who supply
all their material needs 1 . As soon as you get society
divided into subjects and kings, slaves and masters,
this relation of common interests and reciprocal services
is at an end.

Plato traces these facts to their psychological origin.
They are concessions to the selfish principle in man, and
they express the fact that the highest element in human
nature, reason, has been dethroned from its place. In
its stead * spirit/ the honour-loving element, the element
that seeks for personal distinction, rules. Personal dis
tinction is the guiding principle of the timocratic man ;
that is to say, it is the thing which such a man at his best
moments lives for. From the rule of spirit result several
features of Spartan life, which Plato mentions with
approval : the prevailing respect for authority, the atten
tion paid to gymnastic and military training, the common
meals of the governing class (fwo-m a), and the law that
they should not engage in trade. On the other hand
reason has been degraded and made merely the servant
of military organization and strategy. Therefore reason
itself becomes degenerate, and the general suspicion in
which exceptional abilities are held shows that reason,
not being exercised on the highest object, the good of
the community, loses its simplicity and integrity. And,
as the highest element suffers, so the whole life of the
society suffers. The appetites for the commodities which
give the command of enjoyment, instead of being kept in

1 Cf. V. 463 B.

DECLINE OF SOCIETY AND OF THE SOUL 305

their place and being absorbed in providing the neces
saries of life, begin to assert themselves on their own
account ; the great symptom of this which Plato notices
is that avarice, which is professedly tabooed in this society,
is nevertheless growing up in the dark. You cannot
eradicate appetite, and the more you fail to educate the
best things in human nature the more the worst things
will assert themselves ; and so beneath the fair exterior
of honour one of the lowest qualities is developing
itself. The secret growth of avarice in spite of the laws
is alluded to by Aristotle l also as a feature of Spartan
society in his time 2 . Here, in the description of the
typical timocratic state, the love of money is represented
as growing till it becomes the dominant force in social
life, and the institutions of the state are transformed in
accordance with it, political power being made to depend
on wealth.

In the life of the individual timocratic man a similar
process is at work. The typical timocratic man is
represented as the son of a good man, a philosopher,
in a state where the best men are divorced from public
life, and where public affairs are in the hands of the
selfish and unprincipled. Ambition makes him despise
his father s ways, and he plunges into a public career.
At first honour keeps him straight ; but as he gets
older this impulse, unsupported in his case by reason,
degenerates into mere self-assertion, and, the appeti
tive element breaking loose, he ends by becoming a
lover of money. This takes place because he has
neglected the one thing that can preserve a man s

1 Politics, 1270 A, ii sqq., and 1307 A, 34 sq.

2 For the explicit connexion of timocracy with Sparta and with Crete
see 544 c.

306 LECTURES ON PLATO S REPUBLIC
goodness through his life, reason blended with music

Plato s view of Sparta is well illustrated by a
passage in the Laivs^. He there tells us that the self-
control of which the Spartans are so proud fails under
circumstances to which they are not used, namely when
they are exposed to the temptations of pleasure instead
of those of danger and pain. His admiration of Sparta,
like Aristotle s, was confined to one point. The Spartans
were the only people in Greece \vho had deliberately
adopted a certain principle of life and had carried it
through ; and both writers admired the care given to
education of a certain kind, the respect for order and
discipline, and the absorption of the individual in the
social organization, which resulted from this ; but both
saw well enough that the Spartan life and the objects
at which this organization aimed were very narrow 2 .
550 c to The rule of spirit (unsupported by reason, which was
555 A. made to lead and not to serve) having allowed appetite,
the third element in human nature, to grow, this in turn
becomes the ruling power, and first in its most respect
able form, desire for wealth. Oligarchy means to Plato
the supremacy of those appetites for the necessaries
of life, which, when kept in their proper subordination, j
are the most serviceable appetites. It is that form o)
constitution in which wealth is openly acknowledged as
the end of life, the thing most worth living for, and the
thing the possession of which makes one man better thar
another. The political constitution by which politica
power is given to the wealthy is only the expression anc

1 !. 633 B sqq.

a Cf. Aristotle, Eth. Nic. X. 9, 13; also Politics, 1333 B, 12 sqq.
*337 A &gt; 3 1 ; *33 8 B, 9 sqq. ; and 1^94 B, 18 sq.

DECLINE OF SOCIETY AND OF THE SOUL 307

public recognition of what the leading men in the state
believe to be the true end of life. The most important
typical consequences of the adoption of this constitution
are now described. First, it still further breaks up the unity
of the state l t which depends upon every class doing its own
proper work for the community ; there are now two cities,
one of rich, and one of poor, no longer bound together
by community of interest, but separated by diversity of
interests. Secondly, the strength of the state diminishes
as its unity diminishes ; for the rich are afraid to arm
the poor, and they themselves are getting less and less
capable of military service ; there is growing physical
degeneracy. Thirdly, the growth of money-getting
involves the growth, alongside of it, of money- wasting ;
and the laws, which are made of course in the interest
of the rich nobility, allow and encourage unlimited
alienation of property. Outside the ranks of the rich,
there is poverty sinking into pauperism and generating
a dangerous class, which is swelled by numbers of ruined
spendthrifts from the ranks above. The existence of
this dangerous class involves forcible repression, but the
government does not continue long to be backed by force.
In the account of the genesis of the oligarchic man we
have a typical picture of Greek life. Aspirants to
political distinction are constantly being ruined by mali
cious accusations (a-vKo^avrta), and therefore a revulsion
from public life takes place in the better class, and they
narrow their minds to trade and commerce. Reason
is now still further degraded into a mere instrument of
money-making ; and spirit is schooled into a worship of
rich men and riches. Continued neglect of education

1 In the timocracy there was still unity for purposes of military
defence.

X 2

3o8 LECTURES ON PLATO S REPUBLIC*

-ia, 553 E, 554 B) continues to produce lowering
of character. Externally there is decency, order, and
respectability in the life of the oligarchic man, but the
drone appetites are beginning to make themselves felt,
though as yet kept in check by the absorbing appetite
for wealth. As in the state the rich restrain but do not
direct the poor, so in the individual this dominant passion
chains the others but does not employ them, and they
develop into a dangerous element within him. The
man, like the state, is becoming weak because he cannot
employ the whole of himself.

555 * to Plato s picture of the rise of democracy makes
clearer than before the principles which underlie his
description of the gradual decline of human life. In the
first place, this decline is determined throughout by a
gradual change in that which is made the good or end
of life. In the second place, the course it takes follows
logically from the principle that, when men have an
appetite for a certain thing, that appetite must grow
stronger and stronger unless there is something else in
them competent to check it ; at each stage of the decline
mere appetite absorbs more and more of man s life into
itself 1 . The psychological explanation of the origin of
democracy is found in the object which is recognized as
the good in oligarchy, and the insatiable appetite for it
which oligarchy encourages. In the oligarchic state
everything is done with a view to wealth, and the char
acter of the legislation, the most important means b&gt;
which the life of society is regulated, expresses openl}
the recognition of greed as the true principle of life b}
the dominant people in the state. This principle ulti
mately overthrows the state. Oligarchic legislation fail:

1 Cf IV. 424 A, where the opposite process to this decline is referred tc

DECLINE OF SOCIETY AND OF THE SOUL 309

to check that accumulation of wealth in a few hands
which leads to the overthrow of oligarchy. Plato men
tions two possible legislative checks upon this accumu
lation, restrictions upon the alienation of private pro
perty, which would hinder its accumulation in a few
hands, and the abolition of legal means for the recovery
of debts *, which would check the gradual ruin of the
spendthrift class. Neither of these steps is taken in
the oligarchic state, because it is the interest of the
leading people to sell up as many of their own class
as possible. Ultimately oligarchy is overthrown be
cause the rulers, being set upon wealth only, become
degenerate, and the people discover their weakness ;
having overthrown them, either with foreign help or
through factions among the oligarchs themselves, the
people come into power.

Democracy in Plato means that form of it which
Aristotle distinguishes as unmitigated or pure demo
cracy, in which liberty and equality, in the sense of the
liberty of everybody to do whatever he pleases, and the
equality of everybody with everybody else in every
respect, are the strongest principles in the constitution.
It violates, and in all but the most intense way, the first
principle of society. That principle is that everybody
differs from others, and should do that which he is fit to
do and nothing else. In defiance of this, democracy
assigns equality alike to the equal and the unequal. 1
This sums up Plato s charge against what he understands
by democracy. The most vital point in which this
comes out is government ; democracy asserts that there
is no need at all for anybody to be or to make himself
peculiarly fitted in order to be able to govern 2 .

1 Cf. Arist. Eth. Me. IX. i. 9. 2 Cf. VI. 4 28 B.

310 LECTURES ON PLATO S REPUBLIC

The democratic man exhibits in his individual life the
character which, when it becomes dominant and com
mands public approval, produces democracy in the sense
that has been described. The psychological foundation
of democracy is a new form of the rule of appetite in the
individuals who give the state its character. In the olig
archic man the desires which are most necessary, and
are also most orderly, concentrated, and respectable,
dominate ; in the democratic man no particular appetite,
but appetite generally, governs. This absence of prin
ciple he, like the democratic state, makes into a principle.
To distinguish him from the oligarchic man Plato here
gives us a division of the appetitive element in the soul ;
there are two great classes of appetites, the necessary and
the unnecessary. Necessary appetites are those which
cannot be got rid of, and to this class belong all those the
satisfaction of which does good good, that is to say, to
the whole man. Unnecessary appetites are those which
can be got rid of by education and practice, and these
are appetites the satisfaction of which does no good.
The necessary appetites are also called the wealth-
getting appetites (xpJ7M ar&lt;mKa O because they are
productive of something which is of use ; and the
unnecessary appetites, which are unproductive, are
called the spending appetites. Thus the appetite
for food up to the point to which it is good for the
bodily organism is necessary and productive ; desire
for food beyond that point is unnecessary and unpro
ductive. The typical democratic man, then, is the son
of an oligarchic man in whom the productive desires are
predominant. He is brought up without education, and
he comes into fashionable and fast society. He has
nothing to feed his reason upon ; therefore there is no-

DECLINE OF SOCIETY AND OF THE SOUL 311

thing to give unity to his appetites, and so they become
c motley and many-headed. They fall, however, into two
main divisions ; one of these consists of appetites which
are still partly rational, and at first these have the
mastery over those which are wholly irrational, being
supported by the traditions of the man s family. But,
as the more rational appetites are unsupported in their
control by anything in the man himself, that is by his
reason, the unproductive appetites, however much they
have been cut down, sprout again whenever the external
influences which have helped to repress them are removed.
The empty place of reason in such a man is occupied by
a counterfeit reason ; quack theories (^euSet? KOL a\a6ves
Ao yoi), which ally themselves with his unproductive
appetites, develop into a brilliant cynicism which ex
poses the fallacies of so-called morality. This is the
stage of * initiation/ in which the soul gets rid of illusions,
and comes to see through many things and to call them
by their right names, calling, for example, all sense of
shame cowardice. Through this stage the soul passes
into freedom, or living as one pleases, in other words
anarchy. Such a life tends to bring about the ultimate
mastery of one ruling passion, which is tyranny ; but,
with luck, as the man grows older, he will settle down
into a state of compromise or balance of appetites, in
which his principle is to be the creature of the moment.
He denies any distinction of better or worse, and gives
himself in turn to every desire upon which the lot falls.
Asceticism and debauchery, philosophy, sport, idleness,
politics, war, successively engage him l ; and this is what
he calls the free development of his nature. Such a

1 Cf. Dryden s Zimri in Absalom and Achitophel, 544 sqq.

312 LECTURES ON PLATO S REPUBLIC

man will be the object of general admiration and envy
in the democratic state.

562 A to As democracy developed out of oligarchy, so the
tyrannic principle develops logically out of the demo
cratic. Tyranny arises from the inevitable excessive
pursuit of that which democracy recognizes as the good,
namely absolute liberty. All appetite is essentially
insatiate 1 , and it is the inherent tendency of the demo
cratic desire for liberty to grow, unless it is checked.
All the peculiar institutions ascribed to extreme demo
cracy proceed from this, and the tendency increases
until at last it makes people so delicate that they can
stand no restraint whatever. There is, Plato observes, a
law of reaction, to be seen in the changes of the weather
and in the varying states of physical organisms, and in
the history of political communities no less, according
to which excess in one direction is generally followed by
excess in the opposite direction. And so, in the case of
the democratic state, out of absolute liberty absolute
servitude proceeds. In the typical case of such a revo
lution, which he goes on to describe, democratic society
has fallen into three main divisions. There is a class of
ruined spendthrifts and adventurers, which already
existed under oligarchy, but which under democracy has
become the most prominent and the loudest-voiced
element in the state. There is a class of orderly and
quiet money-makers whose wealth forms the pasture of
the drones of society. There is lastly the mass of citi
zens who work with their hands. Theoretically they are
the ruling class, for they have the majority of votes, but
they only can or only will take a constant part in public
affairs if they are paid for so doing, and accordingly the

1 Cf. Arist. Eth. Nic. III. xii. 7.

DECLINE OF SOCIETY AND OF THE SOUL 313

adventurers, who are the political leaders of the state, are
always paying them out of the money of the rich l . In
time the rich come to an end of their endurance, and
resist this system of plunder. Thereupon an outcry
is raised against them, they are denounced as cursed
oligarchs, and accusations of seditious conspiracy are
brought against them. In this time of excitement the
boldest and most unscrupulous of the political adven
turers steps forward as the friend of the people and the
champion of democracy. The critical point, when his
destiny is decided, and the champion of the people
becomes a tyrant, is reached when he first sheds the
blood of the rich who oppose him. He is then no longer
his own master, but is inevitably driven on to shed more
blood. Under the pretext that the enemies of the state
are plotting against his life, he persuades the people to
grant him a body-guard. When armed force is once at
his disposal he has obtained the power of a tyrant, and
the necessities and fears of the position in which he is
now placed lead him to further and further acts of
tyranny, to establish his power.

In describing how the tyrannic type of individual
character arises, Plato brings in a further division of the
appetitive elements in the soul. Among the unnecessary
appetites there are some that are altogether lawless,
wild-beast appetites 2 . These, Plato says, exist even
in men of the best regulated life, but they are kept in
check, or come out only in dreams, when reason has least

1 Cf. Aristophanes, Knights, 791 sqq. and 1218 sqq. (in attack on
Cleon); also Demosthenes, Olynth. III. 31.

2 To 6tjpiu&gt;8is Tf Kal a-ypiov. In somewhat the same way Aristotle
(Eth. VII. i. and v.) describes the Orjpiujocis t(is as the extreme of human
badness, corresponding to heroic and divine virtues which are the
extreme of human goodness.

314 LECTURES ON PLATO S REPUBLIC

control over the soul l . They cannot be tamed ; most
desires can be made to fill a serviceable part in the
economy of life, but these cannot. The tyrannic man, of
whom the actual tyrant is the most extreme type, is one
who is himself tyrannized over by a single dominant
appetite of this sort. He thus differs from the democratic
man. The soul of the democratic man has gradually lost
its unity, but a sort of equilibrium exists between the varied
desires which sway it. He can only remain democratic,
and live upon the principle of having no principle, so long
as this equilibrium lasts. But it cannot be expected to last
long ; the tendency must be for a few of his appetites, and
ultimately for a single appetite, to become dominant over
the others ; and, when once a single appetite has got the
lead, it goes on, like the tyrant in the state, extending its
sway, till at last it swallows up the whole man. A man
so mastered by a single bestial passion will for the sake
of it commit any crime. When there are only a few such
men in a state, they will be criminals on a small scale,
but when this lawless character becomes common, the
end will be that the most tyrannic man, the man most
dominated by his one passion, will make himself tyrant
of the state.

1 On dreams and visions in this connexion cf. Ti*n. 70 r&gt; 72 &.

XIV. COMPARISON OF THE JUST
AND THE UNJUST LIFE

[Republic, IX. 576 B to end.]

THE leading types of imperfect states and of imperfect
individual lives have now been described, ending with
a state which is in the utmost conceivable degree
opposite to the ideal state 1 , and with a life which is
in the utmost conceivable degree opposite to the just
life. Plato proceeds to deal with the question of the
happiness of these lives, matching the just man against
the unjust in three comparisons drawn from three
different points of view, three Olympic contests as he
calls them, in which Glaucon, who began by stating the
claims of injustice, is made to declare which is victor.

1 [This state is no longer called dpiGTOKparia, as in VIII. 544 E, 545 D,
but (by implication) jfiacnAeta (legitimate monarchy), i.e. the state in which
the one best man of all has most power, the extreme opposite to rvpavvis.
See Politicus, 302 B sq., and cf. Aristotle, Politics, 1279 A, 33 sq. In the
connecting section at the end of IV. (445 D) the ideal state, we are told,
may be called indifferently dpiffToxparia or /3aatAe&lt;a. There is probably no
political significance in the change of phrase here ; the (3aaL\fvs is brought
in for the sake of comparison with the Tvpavvos, being the good man
placed in the position where his goodness can develop itself on the
largest scale. ED.]

3i6 LECTURES ON PLATO S REPUBLIC

This is therefore the formal answer to the original
question with which the argument began in Book II.

The discussion that follows is unsatisfactory, as any
discussion of the relative values of different states of
consciousness always must be. Nobody can prove that
his own life or his own form of happiness is better worth
having than another, for everybody is ultimately his
own judge. But, if there is to be a discussion in which,
as in this case, the arguer has practically prejudged the
question before he begins his argument, its interest for
us lies in observing the principle upon which he has
formed his judgment, and the canons of criticism which
he applies. Tiere Plato begins by laying down the
principle upon which the comparison between these
different lives is to be mader It must be made not
upon an external view but dn a view which penetrates
to the inner life of the man, and which sees him, not
as he shows himself to the world, but stripped and bare ;
or, as we may say, interpreting the method which Plato
actually applies, it must be made upon a complete view
which takes in the whole man*X

577 B to (i) First of all Plato takes three of the principal forms
of well-being : freedom, wealth, and security from fear,
which answer in some degree to the ends which the
democratic, the oligarchic, and the timocratic characters
respectively set themselves to obtain. He asks, from
the point of view of an intelligent and impartial out
sider who has observed the different lives as they have
been described, Which man is really free, which is really
rich, which is really without fears the most just or the
most unjust ? The most important point in this passage
is the conception of freedom which it involves. It may
be said, no doubt, that the tyrannic man, being one who

THE JUST AND THE UNJUST LIFE 317

does exactly what he pleases, is the freest man, and
especially if circumstances let him develop to the full and
he becomes a tyrant, for he is then ex hypothesi auto
cratic and omnipotent, ^lato asserts on the contrary that
he is an absolute slave, because if you look at his whole
soul you will see that he least of all men does what
he wishest^^his is a simple expression of Plato s con
ception of freedom of will. Freedom is doing what one
wills, the freest man is he who most does what he wills,
and that means the man whose whole self does what it
wills/ TJow in the tyrannk man nearly the whole self
is in abeyance ; it ia enslaved to one shred or fragment
of human natures Similarly in the Gorgias 1 Plato
declares that tyrants do nothing that they desire

(a 8ov\ovTOii\ t^Tere what one desires means the really

desirable (in Aristotle s phrase, d^Aws j3ouA?)ToVX i/The

really desirable is that which is desirable to the real .
or true self, and the real self means the whole selfv/
Throughout the moral philosophy of Plato and Aristotle
there runs the conception of an order not only of the
physical but of the moral world, to which we must
conform if we would be at our best, or, in other words,
if we would satisfy our nature: and along with this
goes the kindred idea that the higher nature is, so to
speak, the truth of the lower, that is that the lower
nature finds what it aims at in the satisfaction of the
higher. /Freedom, accordingly, or doing what one wills,
is not the power to satisfy any and every desire, but the
power to satisfy those desires in which the whole self
finds satisfaction*/

The idea of true wealth, which is next introduced
in this passage, and which is like that of the New Tes-

1 466 D sqq.

3i8 LECTURES ON PLATO S REPUBLIC

tament, has already appeared in Book III, where Plato
refused to let the Guardians be rich in money and land
on the ground that, if they lived up to their position,
they would always have the true wealth \ *U nlike them
the tyrannic soul is emphatically poor, for it is always
wanting and never satisfied ; it is incapable of being
filled (&n\r](TTos) 2 . Similarly, it is the nature of such
a soul always to have something to fear and never to
feel securer

The tyrannic soul, then, is all unsatisfied desire. But,
completely to realize this ideal of misery, the tyrannic
man must have scope given to his nature by becoming
a full-blown tyrant. As the philosopher is not all that
he can be unless he finds a state meet for him, where
his activity has full scope 3 , so it is with the tyrannic
man. It is only when he becomes the ruler of a com
munity that he reaches the full measure of his destruc-
tiveness, and then he attains the complete misery of
absolute isolation. The ideal of well-being is that a man
should realize to the full his communion with his fellow
men; the tyrant is absolutely cut off from his fellows.
Moreover, seeming to be free and powerful, he, beyond
all other men, is under the compulsion of constant fear.
580 D to (2) In the second part of the comparison between
the just and the unjust, the question put is how these
different lives compare in respect of pleasantness (fjSovri).
The point of view from which Plato enquires into this
is psychological, and the passage throws a good deal
of light on his conception of the soul.

T 416 E.

8 Cf. Gorgias, 493 A to D, where the soul of the incontinent man is
compared to a sieve.
3 497 A.

THE JUST AND THE UNJUST LIFE 319

There are, as we have already learned in Book IV,
three parts or forms of the soul, the rational, the
spirited, and the appetitive (einBv^TLKov). To each of
these forms, as we are now told, there corresponds
a typical object of desire (eTriflvjouo), and a pleasure
which attends the satisfaction of that desire. Plato
thus attributes a desire to the two higher forms of
this soul as well as to the part called par excellence
i:idv^r]TiK.6v. E-rnflu/jua, that is, is used, as in this passage,
in the general sense of desire (desire for food, or for
truth, or for anything else), and also (like the English
appetite ) in the narrower and more usual sense of
physical desires. It is in the latter sense that the
name -ni6v^r\TLK.ov has been given to the third element in
the soul. It is given because certain bodily appetites,
owing to their intensity (or^ofyxmjj), have acquired
such a prominence among the different desires of
this part of our nature that they may be allowed
to give the name to it (580 E). But the dominant
object among all the various objects which the appeti
tive element seeks is material wealth, because that
is the general instrument for satisfying appetites.
Accordingly Plato here calls this element the wealth-
seeking or gain-seeking part of the soul (^tAoxpTJMaroi 1
Kal $iAoKep8s) ; and in speaking of those in whom the
appetitive side of the soul predominates as lovers of
gain he does not distinguish the oligarchic, the demo
cratic, and the tyrannic characters 2 . By the appetitive

1 Also in IV. 435 E.

2 Some of those who are here classed together may of course be
prodigal of money, but they all the same set their hearts upon the
things which money can buy. In the description of the tyrannic man
573 sq. the development of lust is represented as bringing with it at first
prodigality, then avarice and extortion.

320 LECTURES ON PLATO S &lt; REPUBLIC

man he does not at all necessarily mean a sensual man,
but merely one whose dominant wish is to be physically
comfortable and satisfied l ; and he represents the great
majority of men in every state as appetitive, not because
he thinks the majority of men are sensualists and volup
tuaries, but because the desire for physical comfort plays
a very large part in most men s lives. In the present
passage, then, for the sake of simplicity the pleasure of
material gain is taken as the characteristic pleasure of
this form of soul. Next, to the spirited element the
typical object of desire is to win, and to get distinction,
the reward of winning (VLK.CLV KCU evSoKipe iv) ; so it may
be described as that which loves strife and loves honour
((f)L\oviKw and ^jAo ujuoz;). Lastly, the desire of the
rational element is to see things as they are, and it
may therefore be described as that which loves know
ledge and wisdom ((/uAo/jiatfes nal ^tAoVo^oi/).

Mankind, then, falls into three great classes, according
as one or another of these three elements in the soul
prevails in them. Each class judges its own pleasure
to be the most pleasant, and regards the pleasures of
the other two as not worth having. How can we decide
which judges best ? The question must be decided by
intelligent experience and by reasoning (e/xTret/na nai
c/&gt;poi/rj&lt;rei KOL Ao ya&gt;). Which then of these three types
of men has the widest experience to enable him to

1 [Nor are all the tastes in which a man shows himself ei
necessarily tastes for bodily pleasures and comforts, TO
covers besides bodily appetites the desire for anything that we should
call mere amusement. The democratic man, for instance, amuses himself
with philosophy and even with occasional ascetic practices, without Plato
thinking him any the less eirtOv{*r]TiK(j&lt;s for that. Art and literature also,
not only when they are specially sensuous, but so far as they are simply
the gratification of fancy, emphatically minister to the pleasure of TO
fvt0v,uT)Tite6v. ED.]

THE JUST AND THE UNJUST LIFE 321

judge? The philosopher has necessarily from his
earliest years had experience of the pleasures which
men derive from gain ; and the pleasure of winning,
and of the honour which rewards winning, has been
experienced by everybody who has ever attained
what he has striven for, since success and its
rewards are not the prerogative of any one kind of
man. Therefore, so far as personal experience goes,
the philosopher has the experience of the others; but
they have not his ; nor has their experience been
intelligent (/xera &lt;poi&gt;7Jcra&gt;y) ; and, so far as reasoning
on the matter goes, he is of course the best reasoner.
He then is the best judge.

The argument is unsatisfactory, because the question
at issue could only be solved for any one by an appeal
to his own personal experience ; a man who had no
experience of a kind of pleasure which he was asked
to believe was better than his own could not be con
vinced by the experience of another. So that, if such
an appeal as this is to be made to a man, he must start
with some conception of a higher and a lower persona
lity in himself. But the passage is interesting because
t shows that by the philosophic form of soul Plato
iocs not mean one which exists, so to say, alongside
&gt;f and to the exclusion of the others, ^e thinks of
t as the fullest form of human nature^/ As you go
lowmvards from this fullest form of personality,
experience becomes more limited. We may illustrate
his conception from the case of what we call genius.
,Ve should all recognize in Shakespeare a personality
vhich/was not exclusive, but which might be said to /
lavevem braced the experience of all kinds of lives*/
Ve cannot understand the works of such a genius

N. P. Y

322 LECTURES ON PLATO S REPUBLIC

fully, because we have not the experience to follow
it, and so genius is generally incomprehensible to the
majority of mankind ; but so far as we can follow the
works of genius we do enter into its experience, and
we should admit that we therein taste of a fuller
experience than our own. We must be careful, again,
not to misunderstand what Plato means by experience.
When he speaks here of the philosophic soul having
of necessity the experience of the other souls, he does
not mean that the philosopher, any more than the
great poet, has gone about the world testing various
kinds of life, but that the higher kind of man learns
more from the experience which he shares with the
lower kind without having to go through nearly the
same amount of it ; and, as a matter of fact, this is true.
5838 to (3) In the third place Plato compares the pleasures
of these different kinds of life in another way. The form
in which he puts his question is no longer, Which is
the pleasantest of these pleasures? or, Which is the
best worth having ? but, Which is the most real pleasure ?
The pleasure of the lower kind of life is, he contends,
comparatively not pleasure at all. First, he endeavours
to show that something which is not really pleasure is
constantly by an illusion taken for pleasure. True or
unmixed (KaOapd) pleasure cannot, he says, consist in
mere relief from pain, nor true pain in mere cessation
of pleasure. Between pleasure and pain there is a neutral
state which is neither. When pain passes away and they
enter into this state, people call it pleasure, and equally
when pleasure ceases and they enter into this state they
call it pain. But it is logically absurd to call a state,
which is neither pleasure nor pain, both pleasure and
pain. This neutral state is one of quiescence

THE JUST AND THE UNJUST LIFE 323

whereas both pleasure and pain are movements

of the soul. Now, it can be shown by simple instances

that there are pleasures which are not preceded by pain,

and of which the cessation is painless; but most of what

are ordinarily called bodily pleasures are of the nature

of cessation of pain ; and, on the principle just laid

down, they cannot be real pleasures. But it is easy

to see how the name of pleasure gets appropriated to

them by so many people. Just as a man who has

risen half-way from a lower to a higher elevation, and

A ho has never seen beyond half-way, may think him-

:elf at the top, so these cessations of pain are regarded

is pleasure by those who have no experience of what

eal pleasure is. Now what is the real pleasure?

J leasure means being satisfied (7rA?//xo(m) with that

vhich naturally satisfies. The reality of the pleasure

s proportionate to the reality of the satisfaction at-

ained. If the satisfaction is transient and the want

:eeps recurring, there is no real satisfaction and no

eal pleasure. And so the question, What is the real

)leasure ? brings us back to the question : What is the

nost real element in the human soul ; or what do

/e mean by ourselves? For the real satisfaction is

hat which satisfies our real selves 1 .

Plato s question whether certain pleasures are real
5 difficult to understand. There is a difficulty in all
uestions about the truth of feelings. In one sense all
eelings are real ; what we feel, we feel ; and we cannot
uppose that Plato is questioning that. But the same

1 [In the last few sentences and in parts of the following discussion
irtain points in Plato s argument acquire a relatively stronger emphasis
fan they have in the original ; but it has been thought better to leave
ie passage untouched. ED.]

Y 2

324 LECTURES ON PLATO S REPUBLIC

remark applies to anything of which the reality is called
in question. Everything is in one sense real ; and when
we ask, Is this real ? we do not mean, Is this what it is?
but, Is it what it suggests? or, Is it accompanied by
what we suppose it to be accompanied by ? or, Is it
related as we suppose it to be related ? or, Does it
occupy the place that we believe it to occupy ? In fact,
it is absolutely true that, in asking whether a given thing
is real, we are always asking about something else
besides it. Suppose, to take an instance of a feeling
other than pleasure, that some one asked, Am I really
hot ? would that be a sensible question ? It would
only be so if he meant, Is this feeling, which I have,
connected with certain processes in my body which
a physiologist would associate with heat? or, If I
applied a thermometer to myself would the mercury rise
to a certain height ? or something of that sort. The
question can only be intelligently asked and answered
if there is, in the feeling which it concerns, an implied
reference to something else ; for asking the question
implies the possibility of testing the feeling, and it
cannot be tested by itself, but only by something other
than it. To apply this to Plato s question about the
reality of pleasure and pain, there can be no discussion
as to whether a man does or does not feel pleasure
or pain, in what is perhaps the most obvious sense of the
words ( f you cannot argue a man out of his feelings/ as
we say). If Plato s question is to be asked and answered
intelligently, there must be in pleasure or pain an implied
reference to something else.

Now Plato takes pleasure in the sense of being satisfied

1 [The only difficulty of the most important part of the argument arise:
from the fact that neither pleasure in English nor iJSov^ in Greek i:

THE JUST AND THE UNJUST LIFE 325

(ro 7r\T)pouo-0at), which is a natural enough way of defining
it. In this sense any particular part of the self receives
pleasure when it is satisfied with its own appropriate
object, and it can be satisfied with none but its own appro
priate object ; you cannot satisfy hunger with drink or
thirst with solid food. This gives us a point of view from
which it can be asked which is the most real pleasure.
If we answer that the self or soul, though it is a manifold
thing, is still one thing, it is intelligible to ask, In which
of the various kinds of satisfaction is the self most really
satisfied ? and that is what Plato means when he asks
which is the most real pleasure. He puts the question
in a naive and simple form. Is the self, he asks, equally
satisfied in the satisfaction of hunger and in the satisfac
tion which attends the attainment of truth ? Satisfaction
is real in proportion as it is permanent (fitfiaios). Now
when we satisfy hunger the satisfaction attained has
very little permanence indeed ; we are always getting
hungry, and we cannot say that our hunger becomes
more satisfied as we grow older. To put this in another
way: the self which is satisfied by eating is neither

necessarily or indeed commonly equivalent to this. The word pleasure
applies to a temporary state of feeling, and we use it sometimes with
more, sometimes with less reference to the belief on which that feeling
depends, and to the feelings which will succeed it, and to the other
feelings, pleasant or painful, with which the specific feeling we are
speaking of is inextricably bound up; sometimes we use it with no such
reference at all. In the narrow sense, which is very common, a pleasure
is just as truly and as really a pleasure, even if it depends on an entire
mistake, or if none but a fool would feel it. Aristotle, in the tenth Book
of the Ethics, expressly limits the use of the word i}8ovrj to this narrow
sense, and opposes it to what Plato here calls pleasure. This latter is
what a man would deliberately and with full understanding choose, and
be permanently content to have had, and which is therefore of course
a more real pleasure the more a man can choose it deliberately and with
his whole mind. ED.]

326 LECTURES ON PLATO S REPUBLIC*

a large part of the self, nor a part which is constantly
and permanently present in the self. We might try to
imagine a self which had nothing to satisfy but physical
hunger, and we might ask how much satisfaction it
attains ; or we might equally ask how much of a self
it is, what is the amount of its reality ; for we must
remember that the self and the satisfaction of the self
are not separable, the self is the satisfaction it attains.
Such a being would be always going up and down from
pain to satisfaction, and from satisfaction to pain ; it
would be in a state of perpetual fluctuation between
these limits ; and we should have to say that the satis
faction attained in such a life was very small indeed,
that it was very little of a life, and the self very little of
a self. Now we may ask another question : Why do we
all despise a man who lives to eat ? The ultimate reason
is that we assume that there are in him other capacities
requiring satisfaction, and that the part of the man s self
which is satisfied in eating is very small. Adopting
Plato s phraseology, we may say that the man who lives
to eat sacrifices nearly the whole of self to one small
fragment. A very good practical test to apply to the
value of different satisfactions is to ask how much of
oneself is honestly satisfied by each. All reflexions on
the transient nature of certain satisfactions come back
to this fact : self does not exist merely in isolated
moments of satisfaction ; each satisfaction has to be taken
as a contribution to the satisfaction of self as a whole, as
is seen in the fact that we may feel remorse even in the
moments of satisfaction.

Thus Plato s comparison of the pleasures of the higher
and lower forms of life resolves itself into this : that in
the higher form of life a larger part of what there is in

THE JUST AND THE UNJUST LIFE 327

the soul is satisfied ; that in it the soul as a whole
is more fully what it has the capacity to be. This view
he helps out by various arguments and figures. In the
first place there is the figure (584 D sq.) 5 derived from
space, of the higher and the lower. He compares life
with its changing states of pleasure and pain to rising and
falling in space (and many other people have described
pleasure as the sense of elevation). He applies this
figure seriously ; and his question may be put in the
form : In what kind of satisfaction does the soul rise to
its highest elevation, and remain most permanently
at a high elevation? Every soul is perpetually, in the
language of this figure, rising and sinking ; no one lives
at a permanent height.

Plato lays stress (584 C and 586 B sq.) upon the
observation that in the satisfaction of most bodily appe
tites l the pleasure which results is of a markedly relative
character ; as he and Aristotle say, these are mixed
pleasures. The very intensity of many of these plea
sures, Plato and Aristotle notice, is due to the fact that
they are in felt contrast with a previous pain. The
previous pain is, so to say, carried on into the pleasure
and * colours it 2 . Thus these pleasures are not pure or
unmixed (fcodo/xu), and in some cases, Plato points out in
the PhUebus*) it is impossible to say whether a feeling
is pleasant or painful, and a phrase like our ; bitter-sweet
has to be invented to describe it.

In the satisfaction of bodily want, the sense of transi-

1 We commonly use the phrase bodily pleasures of pleasures which
we have come to localize in different parts of the body, but of course
all pleasures are consciousness and in that sense not bodily.

2 586 B. Cf. Aristotle, Eth. Nic. VII. xiv. 4.

s 460. The word occurs in a fragment of Sappho (37), tpos . . .

328 LECTURES ON PLATOS REPUBLIC

tion from one state to another is often very prominent
and violent, and probably it was mainly this which led
Plato to describe pleasure as a movement (fcfrqo-tff) *. In
all pleasures whatever we are conscious of transition
to some extent. Every human being, when he is pleased,
is conscious of passing from a state, which was at any
rate negative in regard to pleasure, into a new state. It

1 [This must not be taken to imply that Plato uses the word

with special reference to the class of pleasures in which the sense of

transition is most violent. In the passage where it is brought in (583 E)

the bodily pleasures which are said to be so intensely felt because they

are transitions from previous pain are not more of the nature of Kivricrtis

than the other and more real pleasures are. The point there made about

them is that they arise merely from the recovery of the soul from the

previous Kivyats of want and pain, its return to the original state in which

it was before the pain came (qavxta). It is implied that the pleasure

the soul gets in obtaining hold of truth is a more real icivijffis, because

it is the accompaniment of an elevation of the soul above its original

level, and not of a mere recovery from previous depression, and because

this elevation is, comparatively at least, permanent. In the more obvious

sense Plato would certainly have said that the lower kind of soul was

more subject to movement and change. But its movement is mere

fluctuation (ir\avrj) between two points which it never gets beyond

(586 A). Pleasure was described as a icivrjffis of the soul by Democritus

(v. Ritter and Preller, 158), who meant that it was literally a disturbance

of the arrangement of the material atoms of which the soul consisted.

He contrasted pleasure with tvOv^ia (content), which was the real good

thing to aim at in life, and which, according to Seneca, he took to be

stabilis animi sedes (perhaps stable equilibrium of the soul would

be the best translation). In contrast with this idea Plato and Aristotle

conceive the good state of the soul not simply as a state in which it is

undisturbed by naOrj (though it is that), but as a state in which it steadily

develops into all that it has in it to become. Possibly the fact that here

Plato describes the higher satisfactions of the soul as mvrjffeis (though

KivTjffis consisting not in fluctuation but in progress) is a symptom of

this difference in his view. But, though the word tcivrjais was probably

derived directly or indirectly from Democritus, there is of course no

reason to assume any allusion to his views. Nor is it necessary in this

confused passage to assume that all the ideas which come in can be

developed consistently with one another. ED.]

THE JUST AND THE UNJUST LIFE 329

is true, no doubt, as Aristotle remarks 1 , that the actual
sense of pleasure is not a sense of change, but still it
implies change. (Can we imagine a being perfectly un
changeable to feel pleasure or pain ? Plato s own state
ment 2 that pleasure cannot be predicated of a divine
life may strike us as a paradox ; yet we also, while we
regard the capacity to change for the better as an ad
vantage, on the other hand regard the necessity for
change as a mark of imperfection ; and so to us a per
fectly changeless being may either mean one so far
above us as not to require change, or one so far below
us that it cannot change for the better* 5 .) Now, most
people would agree with Plato that in the higher kinds
of satisfaction the sense of transition is much less violent
and marked than in the bodily pleasures : for example,
in the enjoyment of art it is so.

But an objection might be raised. Is it not an equal
necessity, whether the satisfaction be higher or lower,
that it should always be preceded by a want? Why
too. we may ask, does Plato dilate on the insatiable
nature (aTrAtjorta) of bodily appetite, insisting that bodily
satisfaction is no satisfaction, as if there was some kind
of satisfaction which left no desire behind? For the
answer to these questions we must go back to Plato s
notion of permanence in satisfaction. The want of
knowledge is a want, and a want which is never com
pletely satisfied ; but in the case of the satisfaction,
partial though it may be, which we can obtain for this
want the soul is not always falling back to the same

1 Eth. Nic. X. iii. 4. 2 Phil. 33 B.

3 Aristotle, in Eth. Nic. VII. xiv. 8, after describing the necessity for
change as an imperfection of our mortal nature, declares that God enjoys
ever one simple pleasure.

330 LECTURES ON PLATO S REPUBLIC*

level as before the satisfaction. There is progress
made, the self definitely advances, and each satis
faction remains a permanent element in the self.
Plato expresses this in a bold figure. The part of the
soul which bodily pleasures satisfy is the part which is
not water-tight (artyov 586 B). In the Gorgias 1 the
metaphor is developed, and the appetitive part of
the soul, at least in those who live for the satisfaction
of it alone, is compared to a vessel full of holes. The
idea which these passages bring out is that, if there
is any self at all, there must be a permanent satisfaction
for it. For the fact is that the soul or self is exactly as
much as it gets out of the world ; and so far as the
satisfaction it gets is perishable the self is perishable,
and so far no self. The only test we can apply to
different forms of satisfaction of ourselves is the question,
How far is each, when we have obtained it, a permanent
element in ourselves ?

Here (585 B sq.) and in the Gorgias the idea of the
unsatisfactory nature of certain pleasures is associated
with the idea of their illusoriness. We should recognize
that to take what will not satisfy us for what will is
a form of mental illusion, but we should not naturally
dwell upon that side of moral failure. In Plato, however,
the ideas of intellectual illusion generally, and of moral
failure to find satisfaction, are closely associated. As in
the sphere of knowledge, according to his idea, the soul
is what it gets and retains of truth, so in the sphere of
desire the soul is what it gets and retains. On the side
of knowledge and on the side of desire, the soul identifies
itself with the object which it pursues. On each of these

1 493 A to D.

THE JUST AND THE UNJUST LIFE 331

sides, if that with which we identify ourselves is unreal
and transient, so too are we.

What has been said of living for the satisfaction
of bodily desires applies also, Plato briefly tells us
(586 C sq.), to the pursuit of the satisfaction of the
1 spirited element of the soul for its own sake, the
* seeking to attain personal distinction, or victory over
others, or the satisfaction of one s anger without reason
and sense. Then follows an important passage. Not
only are the lower kinds of satisfaction less true and
real than the higher, but, further, the amount of reality
which they have is proportionate to the degree in which
they are subservient to higher satisfactions. At first
this sounds rather a paradox ; there are reasons which
might make us say that, the more independent of any
ulterior object a desire is, the more likely it is to find
full satisfaction. Plato puts the matter in the opposite
way ; throughout Books VIII and IX he continually
asserts that, the more one element of the soul disengages
itself from the whole, the less satisfaction it attains.
To take a crude instance, a person who lived merely for
eating would get less out of eating, less permanent
satisfaction for himself, than a person who ate with
the consciousness that eating served some higher pur
pose. A person who could say with St. Paul, whether
I eat or drink, I do all to the glory of God/ might
mean : That in the most trivial satisfactions there may
be a sense of serving something wider and higher than
animal appetite ; that this gives to the satisfaction of
appetite a permanence and a satisfactoriness which by
itself it cannot have ; and yet that in this lies the only
appropriate satisfaction of appetite, or, as Plato says, its
own o^ioy satisfaction.

332 LECTURES ON PLATO S REPUBLIC

We have now finished the threefold comparison
between the bliss of two lives, that of the tyrannical soul
which lives most completely in its own lowest element,
and that of the kingly soul which lives most completely in
its highest ; and Plato winds up the discussion with
a fantastic mathematical expression of the difference we
have found between them (587 A sq.). Starting with
the original triple division of the soul upon which the
description of these lives was based, and measuring in
one dimension the differences which we have found
between them, we may say that the life of the timocratic
man, in which the highest element of soul is unsatisfied,
reaches two-thirds as far as that of the philosopher or
king, in which all these elements are satisfied, and
that the life of the oligarchic man, in which only the
appetitive element is satisfied, reaches one-third as far.
Then taking the oligarchic life, which is the life of
appetite at its best, and remembering the triple division
of the appetitive soul, we may say that the democratic
life reaches two-thirds as far as the oligarchic and the
tyrannic one-third as far. So the tyrannic life reaches
one-ninth as far as the kingly. But this measurement
does not give us the full extent of the difference 1 . We
must measure the difference in three dimensions, de
veloping the line into the square, and the square into
the cube, which is a complete and perfect thing. The
result is that the bliss of the philosopher king is 9 x 9 x 9
= 729 times as full as that of the tyrant.
588 A to Socrates is now made to look back to the beginning

&gt; of the whole argument and the contention of Thrasy-

1 [In the triple division of the soul, and again in that of the appetitive
element, the three parts were not each of equal value in the life of the
soul, which is what the calculation if it stopped here would imply. ED.]

THE JUST AND THE UNJUST LIFE 333

machus that perfect injustice is the true interest of man.
He will express the main facts which he has shown
about the life of man in a figure which will make it
clear how far injustice is from being man s interest.
The general drift of this section is to throw the whole
question of interest back upon the inner life of the soul ;
happiness, interest, gain, must be expressed in terms of
man s most inward life, or seen in their relation to the
essence of his soul. * What shall a man give in exchange
for his soul? is the burden of the section; we have
talked of gain or profit what is the ultimately precious
thing (rifjHov) ?

First (588 B to E) Plato repeats his analysis of human
nature. Man, while he is indeed not only one in his
bodily form, but one self or soul, is at the same time
a complex creature 1 . A new light is here thrown on the
elements of which he is composed. The appetitive
element is represented as a many-headed beast, con
stantly changing and capable of an infinite development
of new heads out of itself ; this beast is partly wild and
partly tame ; it is, in bulk, the largest element in human
nature. The spirited element is represented as a lion.
It was no mere figure of speech with Plato to represent
these psychical tendencies in man as animals, for he
clearly believed that there was continuity between the
different forms in which life appears ; that somehow or
other souls rose and fell in the scale of being according
as they behaved in each form in which they were
embodied ; and that there was a real identity between
certain elements in man s soul and certain elements in
other organic creatures. Such an idea receives a new

1 For the idea of man as a strangely composite being, cf. Phaedrus,
229 E sq.

334 LECTURES ON PLATO S REPUBLIC

light from the modern conception of evolution. The
third element in human nature, and in bulk the smallest,
is the strictly human element, the man in us. This
element is also represented as the divine in man l . This
again, though not much is here made of it, is a very im
portant idea for consideration in a theory of human nature.
Both Plato and Aristotle thought that there was in
human nature a certain imperfect presence of God, and
that it was this divine presence, however small, which
made it specifically hitman nature 2 . It is in this
conception that the true anticipations of such Christian
ideas as that of the Incarnation taking the man
hood into God -are to be found. Plato here literally
identifies the truly human nature in us with the divine.
But the ideas are not developed in Plato and Aristotle.

Such then is man. The question of his true gain and
profit has to be considered on the basis of this analysis.
When a man says that injustice secures the real interest
of human nature, he cannot realize what he is saying ;
let us persuade him. To do so, Plato takes the principal
recognized forms of moral goodness and badness, and
shows what each means in terms of his analysis of human
nature (588 E to 590 D). The just and the noble (/caAoV)
are what brings everything in human nature under the rule
of the truly human element in it, which is also the truly
divine. The unjust and the base (altr^pov) are what
enslaves the man in us to the beast. When a man says
that it pays or profits him to do a base action, such as
taking a bribe, he is really saying that he gains by en
slaving what is more precious to him than wife or child
to the most godless thing in him. * Intemperance or
profligacy, again (TO a/coAaoTcuWy, the opposite of &lt;ra&gt;0/oo-
1 5890. 2 Aristotle, Eth. Nic. X. vii. i, and 7 to 9.

THE JUST AND THE UNJUST LIFE 335

, means the letting loose of the wild creature within
us. Self-will (avddbtia) and discontent or irritability
(bva-KoXia) arise from the lion-like element being developed
in bad adjustment to its place in our nature. Both
spirit and appetite are however involved in them 1 ;
in the description of the timocratic man in whom spirit
is dominant, and who is then said to be self-willed/ we
were shown how under the dominion of spirit certain
excessive appetites were growing up in the dark, because
the highest element in man had been dethroned from its
place. Next, the vices of effeminacy, luxury, and the
like come from the weakening of the spirited element
in us. Flattery and meanness imply that it is being
enslaved to the mob of appetites, and that in consequence
the lion in us is being turned into an ape 2 . Lastly come
fiavavcria and x L P OT X v ^ a These words, which signify
a sort of vulgarity which was associated with certain
occupations, may be compared with the word mechanic
as used in a depreciatory sense in Shakespeare. The
Greeks thought that mechanical occupations had a
tendency, not necessarily fulfilled in every case, to
develop this fault ; as indeed every nation stigmatizes
certain occupations, and uses words derived from them,
e.g. flunkeyism/ to describe certain vices. The vices

1 Especially if we read Xeovrwdes r( KOL ux^uSfs (turbulent), the latter
being appetite. The MSS. read XeovTwSes re /eat o&lt;/&gt;ew5es; the latter
serpent-like) would be a new name for the spirited element. But o(/&gt;6cD5es,
which is a strangely formed word and does not occur elsewhere (except
in late writers who might have derived it from this passage after it had
been corrupted), is very likely a mistake for i&gt;x^w8fs, which occurs just
below as a designation of the appetitive element. If however we read
o^coiSey, the introduction of this new term still implies that the lion-like*
element is to some degree identifying itself with the TroA.t/et8es Ope^ta.

- Cf. X. 620 c, where the soul of Thersites is (at his own choice) turned
into an ape.

336 LECTURES ON PLATO S REPUBLIC

named here really mean that the truly human element
is in some degree enslaved to the appetitive.

Thus, in brief, Plato has indicated the nature of various
sorts of vice. They are all of them forms of disorgani
zation of the soul, all of them forms of slavery. The
question for man (590 D to 591 B) is, What is the right
slavery the slavery which is not to the hurt of the
slave? It is that he should be the slave of that in him
which is most fit to rule. Everything in man should
serve what is divine in him. It is best of all that he
should have the ruling principle in himself; but, if he
has it not, the next best is that he should obey it as
imposed on him from without. This shows us the
principle upon which both the law in states and the
education of children are based l . Law was represented
at the outset by Glaucon as a restraint which a reasonable
man would overcome or evade wherever he was able to
do so. But law is the public reason embodied, the ally
of everybody in the community without distinction,
because the ally of that which is best in him. On
the same principle we do not allow children to be their
own masters until, by education, we have set up a con
stitution in them and enabled them to be to some
extent a law to themselves. In moral education, the
principle which is at first imposed on the learner from
without gradually becomes his own principle. This,
which parents and teachers aim at accomplishing for
children, the law also aims at accomplishing for every
member of the community.

Human nature then being what it is, it is impossible
that it can profit a man to be unjust. Nor will his
injustice profit him any the more for being undetected

1 Cf. Aristotle, Eth. Nic. X. ix.

THE JUST AND THE UNJUST LIFE 337

and unpunished by the law. Thrasymachus has main
tained that if a man could do any wrong he pleased and
escape punishment he would be prosperous ; here it is
asserted that the greatest ill that can befall a man is
that he should do wrong and escape punishment ] .

In conclusion (591 c to end of IX) Plato sums up the
principles upon which a wise man will regulate his life.
First, as to what he will wish to learn : he will value
every study in proportion as it helps to bring the soul
into that good state which has here been described 2 .
Next as regards his body ; he will not make the domi
nant principle in his life the attainment of simply animal
pleasures, neither will he make it the attainment simply
of bodily health and strength, for he will value health
and strength of body according as they promote the
control of reason within him (o-ox^poo-wrj). He will
regulate the harmony of his body for the sake of the
harmony of his soul, if he wishes to be really /XOVO-IKO ? 3 ;
the phrase is like the saying of Milton, that the true poet
must make his life a poem. Similarly with wealth ; he
will regulate his acquisition of wealth by asking whether
it does or does not put the ( constitution within him out
of gear. So lastly, as to honour and power, he will or
will not seek them according as he conceives that they
will or will not make him better.

Here follows a curious passage : the mention of honour
makes Glaucon say, Then he will not take part in public
life, and Socrates answers, * Indeed he will in his own
city, but perhaps not in the city where he was born, unless

1 Cf. Gorgias, 472 D sqq.

2 i. e. He will regard the object of all stud} as intended to give the
philosophic or divine element in the soul the nurture necessary for its
development.

3 Cf. 410 and 411.

N. e. 2

338 LECTURES ON PLATO S REPUBLIC*

some divine chance befalls. In Book VI 1 Plato says it
is only by divine grace, that is by some process which,
humanly speaking, cannot be reckoned on, that a great
character can escape demoralization in present society.
In a similar spirit he says here that it will only be as an
exception that a man who has attained harmony of the
soul will find public life congenial to him or compatible
with it; only under exceptional circumstances will the
goodness of the man and the goodness of the citizen
coincide 2 . But such a man will carry about the ideal
state with him and live the life of it ; whether it exists
anywhere on earth (or even in heaven) makes no differ
ence to that. Plato in the Republic oscillates between
two conflicting feelings. His dominant feeling is that
the philosopher does neither the best for himself nor the
best for the world unless he finds a state in which he can
play the part he is fit for (TT/JOO-TJKOWO, TroAtreta). The
loss which results in every direction from the highest
minds not being applied to the government of society
forces itself upon him as an appalling loss. But another
feeling runs under this and emerges from time to time
in passages like the present. It is that, as the world
stands, the divorce between the philosopher and political
affairs is, humanly speaking, inevitable, and that the highest
life for man will generally have to be not a public life.
In describing the philosophic life in the TheaetetuA
Plato almost glories in the fact that, in the ordinary
sense, it is of no use. We find precisely the same two
ideas struggling in many Christian writers. The saving

1 492 A. Cf. 493 A, 499 c.

2 Cf. Aristotle, PoL 12766, 16 sqq., 1278 A, 41 sq., and also 1324 A, 4 to
1325 B, 30.

3 173 c sqq.

THE JUST AND THE UNJUST LIFE 339

of one s soul has often been represented as inconsistent
with living in the world. This mode of thought was
fairly well known in Greece even before Plato s time;
both before his time and later there were philosophers
who lived, in retirement, a sort of monastic and ascetic
life. On the other hand we are familiar with the view
that the Christian principle is best realized in some
kind of public service, or in doing good in some sort of
social life. This idea is no doubt that which is most
prominent in Greek philosophy, and represents the
ultimate outcome of Greek moral thought in its best
form.

Z 2

XV. DIGRESSION ON POETRY

{Republic, X. to 608 B.]

THE first half of Book X is disconnected from the rest
of the Republic, and the transition to the subject of art
and poetry, which is here made, is sudden and unnatural.
We may, indeed, gather from the opening sentences
what is the connexion of ideas in Plato s mind. The
latter part of Book IX has brought vividly before us,
by a fresh analysis, what human nature really is ; moral
evil has been described as the surrender of the self to
the inferior elements in it : and this has been constantly
represented as the submission of the mind to living in
a kind of illusory world. This perhaps suggests the real
nature of the danger of imitative art, which has been
pointed out to some extent already. It tends to stimu
late the illusoriness of feeling ; above all it panders to
an inferior kind of emotion, whether of pleasure or of
pain ; and Plato s peculiar way of describing the infe
riority of an emotion is to show that it is illusory, depen
dent on something unreal. So much connexion, then,
is traceable. Still this section breaks the continuity
of the Republic. It does not bear in any way on the
last section of Book X, in which the immortality of

DIGRESSION ON POETRY 341

the soul is treated, and which would naturally follow
at the end of Book IX, forming a fitting conclusion
to the whole work. Further, within each of these two
sections it is easy to see the traces of more than one
redaction of the same topic 1 .

From the very apologetic opening and the neverthe
less polemical tone which pervades the whole discussion,
one might infer that Plato had been attacked by critics
for what he had previously said about poetry, and that
he therefore returned to the subject with greater animus,
prepared to go a good deal further. In any case he
writes throughout with a deep feeling that the influence
of the poetry of his time, especially the dramatic poetry,
is almost entirely bad, and that the extravagant belief
which prevails in the educational value of Homer and
other poets is unjustifiable and pernicious. He tells us
that it was claimed for Homer and the tragic poets that
they knew all arts, all things human, whether bearing
on virtue or vice, and even things divine, and again
that it was said that Homer was the educator of Greece,
and that a man might direct his whole life by what he
learnt from him 2 . To us Homer is mere literature; no
one regulates his life according to Homer ; but we must
take these statements as representing facts, or we cannot
understand Plato s attitude. He treats the matter as in
the utmost degree a serious one. People sometimes say
that Homer was the Greek Bible, and this expresses
in a crude way what Plato is here referring to.
Extravagant and illogical claims made for the Bible
have produced similar attacks upon it.

1 See, for example, the passages referred to in a note on p. 349, and at
the beginning of the next section of the Lectures.

2 5980 sq. and 606 E.

342 LECTURES ON PLATO S REPUBLIC *

Plato here treats poetry as a great means of tickling
the palate of the Athenian demos ; it is a mere caterer
of excitement. We must take what he says in connexion
with various other passages in his dialogues, where the
power of words to produce illusion is dwelt upon. There
has never been a greater master of words than Plato
himself, and it seems as if this made him all the more
conscious that the art of using language is beset with
weaknesses and dangers. Thus, as he insists in the
Phaedrus l t the written word, whether rhetoric or poetry
or what not, is only valuable as a sort of record and
suggestion of the living word/ which is the truth that
the writer has present to his mind ; unless a writer can
feel that he knows something better than he writes, he is
not really a good writer ; and as soon as he begins to
think that words are the best thing he ceases to under
stand them 2 . (The antithesis of letter and spirit
embodies the same idea.) In his own time, Plato felt,
literature was written for the sake of the pleasure that
the mere words gave. Thus in the Gorgias poetry,
especially tragic poetry, is classed with rhetoric as
a branch of the art of appealing to and pleasing the
crowd ; and it is associated with the arts of the confec
tioner and the perfumer 3 . Various passages in the Laws
too describe bitterly the change that has come over the
Athenian stage ; in the old days the audience were
swayed by people who knew better than they ; at present
there is a theatrocracy, the taste of the general public
is a law to the dramatist 4 .

1 [Of which dialogue, it is to be noticed, a large part is an exhibition
(given for a special purpose) of Plato s mastery of various styles of com
position. ED.]

2 2750 to end. 3 Gorgias, 501 and 502.
* Laws, III, 701 A.

DIGRESSION ON POETRY 343

There are two leading ideas in this attack on art and
poetry. First, there is the idea that imitative art from
its very nature can only represent what things look like,
their outsides, which are a very little part of them ; and
that if any one takes the outsides of things for the whole
of them as, it is implied, a great many people do
then he is living in a world of illusion. Secondly, there
is the feeling that the emotions generally appealed to
and stimulated by contemporary art, and especially
by dramatic poetry, are not those which are worth
appealing to and stimulating. The whole treatment
of the subject presents us with the reverse side of the
picture of art given by Aristotle in the Poetics. The
two works do not deal with the subject from the same
point of view. Plato has set himself to write an indict
ment of art. He deals with its perversions, and what
he says of them is to a great extent true, though no
doubt he accounts for the bad effects of art by a theory
which makes it look, at any rate, as if they necessarily
followed from the nature of imitative art, and not merely
from perversions of it. Aristotle s treatise, on the con
trary (so far as it refers to the same subject), may be
said to aim at a definition of tragedy as it is in its
essence and at its best. It is a matter of indifference
to him whether there ever was a tragedy answering to
his definition, he wants to get at the typical or ideal
nature of tragedy. The situations of the two men,
according to ordinary conceptions of their characters, are
here reversed ; Aristotle puts the ideal side of things,
while Plato writes like a controversialist concerned only
with present facts.

The discussion falls into three parts ; in the first,
Plato investigates the nature of the * imitation which

344 LECTURES ON PLAICES REPUBLIC*

constitutes art, characterizing objectively the nature of
art (595 C to 602 c); in the second and third he really
puts the same thing from the other side, dealing, in two
separate sections which can hardly be said to differ in
subject, with the subjective effects of imitative art upon
the soul (602 c to 6050, and 605 c to 608 B).

595 c to In the first section of the argument Plato starts with
the implied postulate that art is imitation (fu/xijo-ts) ; he

first explains his theory of the nature of art by taking
the illustration of painting ; he then applies the result to
poetry.

What does he mean by saying that art is imitation?
A modern writer in calling art imitative would probably
have in mind the question whether the artist copies from
his experience, or creates. It is clear in what Plato says,
and in a great part of what Aristotle says, that this is
not what they had in mind. Plato does not consider
whether the artist originates ; he is thinking of the
extremely obvious fact that the artist does not in any
case put before us the actual objects of real life, but
certain appearances only ; he represents, and only re
presents. In this, poetry and painting, though very
different in most respects, stand on the same footing. It
is obvious that the painter represents things to us in
colours merely as they appear from a certain point of
view. The poet uses words, as Plato says, like paint ;
his words are no more what they describe than painted
colours are what they represent ; the poet, no less than
the painter, presents to us what things look like from
a partial point of view.

Imitation, which both the painter and the poet
exercise, is a certain kind of production or making
but what kind ? According to Plato there

DIGRESSION ON POETRY 345

are three grades of making and three corresponding
makers to be distinguished. There is, first, the making
of that which is in the order of nature (rd tv rf/ &lt;uW,
o !&lt;rri, TO ov, TO etSos, f) idea), of which the only maker
is God, who is therefore called the maker of the original
or natural ((pvrovpyos). Secondly, there are the ordinary
artificial things used in life, which are made by the
craftsman or artisan ; he makes, Plato tells us, some
thing like that which God makes (TOLOVTOV olov rd oy),
a particular form 1 of the thing God is maker of.
Thirdly, there is a product which consists in the
appearance of such things (particular concrete objects)
as the artisan makes, and the maker of this product
is the artist, who makes the appearance as a man
might make it by holding up a mirror before a thing.
We see at once that this is not a true account of artistic
production ; yet the artist s production and the reflexion
in a mirror are so far alike that they both represent only
partial aspects of things. The artist, according to Plato,
merely holds up the mirror to nature, and does nothing
more.

What does Plato mean by that which is in the order
of nature, and the various phrases he uses as equivalent to
this? He takes an instance which it is very difficult
to make sense of. What meaning is there in speaking
of the * idea of a table or of a bed ; of a table as it is in
nature ; of a table in a sense in which there is one table
and no more ; of a table which is really a table, while
the things we call tables are not ? To get at the mean
ing of Plato s language, we may start by asking what we
imply when we say that of two or more quite different

1 [Not, of course, form in the sense of elSos or iSe a as above. ED.]

346 LECTURES ON PLATO S REPUBLIC*

tables each is a form or example of table. We clearly
imply that there is something in them which is the same
and therefore one. In the fact that they are many and
different forms of the one thing after which they are
called, Plato sees this consequence involved : each is
meant to be what it is called, but no one of them is really
quite what it is called or what it is meant to be. And
it is true that they are not quite what they are meant
to be, nor (it may be said) what they are called. Every
table has limitations ; to begin with, it perishes ; but,
besides that, it never absolutely answers its purpose,
we can always find some defect in it, and at any rate it
only serves its purpose under certain conditions. This
then is the import of the particularity of tables ; they all
purport to be the same thing, namely, that which they
are really meant to be, but none of them is that thing.

The meaning of the conception is much more obvious
in the case of things to which we apply the notions of an
ideal, or of perfection. For instance, there are many
just acts, many forms of justice, each of which is only
partially what we call it ; and we easily understand such
a conception as justice itself/ the one principle which
all just acts imperfectly embody. Plato applies the
same conception to tables and beds in a way that sounds
harsh and ludicrous. In the ordinary sense, as we should
at once say, there is no such thing as this one table that
he talks about. Nevertheless there is a truth about the
construction of tables, and the truth of everything must
be supposed to exist eternally. We may think of this
truth, or of the true table in this sense, as existing in
what we might call an ideal order of the world (what
Plato here calls (frvcris), which we imperfectly apprehend
and reproduce, or as existing in the mind of the Creator;

DIGRESSION ON POETRY 347

Plato would probably say that these were only different
ways of putting the same thing 1 .

This distinction of three things the nature of tables,
which is made not by the craftsman but by the Creator,
the actual table which the craftsman makes, and the
copy of a table which the artist makes leads up to
a comparison (601 C sqq.) of the knowledge that the
artist must possess of a thing to copy it successfully,
and the knowledge that other men may possess of the
same thing. The man for whom the craftsman makes
any instrument, and who knows how to use it, knows
most about its nature and what it should be like; the
horseman, for instance, knows what harness should be ;
this is not the kind of knowledge the artist has of harness,
or tables, or beds, or any object that he may imitate.
The craftsman who is not himself the user of what he
makes has not this knowledge either; but he has
a certain right opinion (opflrj 6o fa) about the thing he
makes, he can carry out the directions of the man for
whom he makes it. The knowledge of the artist who
can only produce the superficial resemblance of the
thing is clearly much less than this. It corresponds,
though the word is not used here, to the conjecture
(cfccuria) of Book VI, and this passage throws a light
on the four-fold division of knowledge in that Book.
The conclusion drawn from this comparison is that what
the artist does is not earnest but play; and this con
clusion is applied to all artistic or poetic imitation ; if we

1 Nothing is said here about the manifold particular objects, not rhade
by human craftsmen, which make up the sensible world ; but, as here the
craftsman makes artificial objects after a pattern which is represented
as existing eternally, so in the Timaeus the whole sensible world is
represented as being the expression to sense of an eternal intelligible
Cf. Timaeus, 28 c sq.

348 LECTURES ON PLATO S REPUBLIC*

take such imitation seriously we are making ourselves
the victims of illusion.

How far such a description of the work of artists and
poets is justified depends first on the particular artist
or poet in question, on his own conception of his
functions, and on the way in which he carries it out ;
it depends, secondly, on the attitude of those who see
or read his works. Plato here has in the main great
poets and artists in view. Even in the case of the
greatest poet he is prepared to maintain that his work
is not the highest kind of work ; if he had done the
things he relates he would have been a greater man.
The comparative value of poetic or artistic work and of
other kinds of work is an unprofitable question to discuss.
It is certain that poets and artists perform a great
function, and that the great poets and artists have done
a great service to mankind. But it is also true that they
are constantly misunderstood by their admirers, that
poetry and art are often taken as if they were something
which they are not, and that claims are made for them
which fairly provoke the sort of reaction that we find
here, where Plato describes them as mere play. He
clearly has in mind people who fancy that merely to
read literature and gather impressions of life from it is
enough to give one an understanding of life. Such
persons are as much under an illusion as if they
were taken in by clever scene-painting. Doubtless only
a childish or untrained mind can be so taken in 1 ; but
language is a far subtler thing than colour and form,
and, in reading things which strongly affect us, we are
liable to suppose that the fact of being strongly affected

1 And we are not to suppose that any great painter or other artist
makes illusion his object.

DIGRESSION ON POETRY 349

by the representation gives us a grasp of the thing
represented. The question whether a poet adds some
thing to your understanding of the world, or gives you
nothing but the mere pleasure of representation and
expression, really depends on your understanding of "the
poet. Having in mind people who imagine that the mere
enjoyment of poetry is something more than it is, Plato
contends that the presentation of life in literature gets hold
of a very small part of it. The condemnation he passes on
imaginative literature is valid as against a certain misunder
standing of its true function. But the point of view from
which imaginative literature could be looked upon as con
taining the whole reality of life, and from which Plato
answers that it gives one merely the most superficial
appearance, is not one which comes very naturally to us.

The two sections which follow are slightly different
treatments of one question 1 : Imaginative art being,
as it has just been described, the production of mere
superficial appearance, what is its effect on the soul ;
what is it that it appeals to in the soul, and what is the
result upon the soul of its so appealing ?

In the former of these sections Plato again begins 6020 to
with painting, imitation which appeals to the eye, and e
applies the analogy of it to poetry. The success of
painting, he points out, depends upon its exercising
a certain illusion, making us, by means of ingenious
devices, think of a certain object as being in three
dimensions when it is really in two 2 . It follows from

1 The opening words of the section beginning 605 c do not naturally
follow on the words which precede (there is nothing for avrfy to refer
to), but they would naturally follow on the concluding words of the
section which ends at 602 B.

2 He illustrates this by referring to reflexions in water and the like,
which were his examples of eluaaia. in Book VI.

350 LECTURES ON PLATO S REPUBLIC

this that, for painting to exercise its influence, reason
(by which he means the scientific impulse, which leads
us to set right all the illusions of sense by measuring
and weighing things, and the like) must be in abeyance.
As painting takes advantage of certain illusions of sight,
so poetry takes advantage of certain illusions of feeling
and emotion ; and as, in the case of painting, reason is for
the time being kept in abeyance by mere appearance, so,
for poetry to have its effect, the feeling of the moment
must blind us to some facts. Take, for example, the case
when poetry makes us feel keenly about what we should
call a great misfortune. When we think about it we see
that we do not know whether what gives us pain is really
an evil or not, we see again that grieving over it does no
good, and (Plato says) that nothing human is worthy
of grave consideration. These facts are analogous to
those which reason tells us when we test the data of
sight by measurement and calculation ; and as in enjoy
ing a painting we are made to occupy ourselves with the
simple appearance of things from a single point of view,
to the exclusion of the facts of which reason would
inform us, so it is when we enter into the feeling of
poetry. Poetry makes the emotion of the moment
exercise a sort of illusion over us. Further, Plato dwells
upon the fact that under the influence of a tragedy, and
similar influences, a man allows himself to enter into
emotions which he would be ashamed to give way to
in real life. Moreover, he points out that the subject-
matter which best lends itself to effective representa
tion in poetry is indiscriminate variety of feeling and
emotion, not feeling and emotion restrained by a prin
ciple. The conclusion to be drawn from all this is
that imitative poetry nourishes and strengthens, not

DIGRESSION ON POETRY 351

the rational part of the soul, but that which is the
source of illusion.

The main subject of the latter section of the discussion 605 c to
is one which Plato has glanced at immediately before, 6o8 B&gt;
namely, the encouragement given to unworthy emotions
by hearing or reading emotional poetry. This effect, he
shows, is produced not only by tragedy but by comedy,
and by artistic representation generally. It appeals
to the appetitive side of our nature, letting loose the
emotional element in us, while keeping in abeyance
reason, which should restrain appetite. If then we
allow the Muse of sweetness to prevail in our city, we
shall be governed by pleasure and pain, and not by
principles and by regard for the common good. Poetry,
then, in the ideal community must be bound within very
narrow limits. Religion and patriotism are its two great
legitimate themes. Hymns to the gods, and panegyrics
on heroes, are the two forms of poetry which this criti
cism has left uncondemned.

While Plato writes chiefly with the influence of the
drama in view, we should not look to the stage, in
England at any rate, for an analogous influence now. In
considering the new question about imaginative literature
which these sections raise we should most naturally have
in mind the effect of novels. No doubt the effect of
imaginative literature is due to the fact that we are
emotionally susceptible ; it appeals in the first instance
to one side of our nature ; and further it is true, as Plato
says, that when we are strongly acted upon by imagina
tive literature a certain part of us is in abeyance for the
time being ; it takes us, as we say, out of ourselves. But
the question is what self it is that it takes us out of.
Does it take us out of our common, every-day, mean

352 LECTURES ON PLATO S REPUBLIC

self? Are the emotions which it appeals to, not emotions
which we should be ashamed to feel in ordinary life, but
emotions which we are not able to feel in ordinary life ?
Does it, to put the question in the form which Aristotle
suggests, give to pity and fear something worth pitying
and something worth fearing for ? Or does it, as Plato
thinks, give us feelings which in the ordinary business of
life, or at any time if we thought people could see into us,
we should be ashamed to feel ? and does it take us, not
out of our prosaic self, but out of the self that is practically
useful in life ? These questions represent a real issue ;
we could easily find examples of each of these effects of
imaginative literature ; and most people have had some
experience of the worse as well as of the better effects of
such literature upon themselves. Most of us. for instance,
would have to admit that a great deal of the excitement
which we get out of novels does not develop the parti
cular things in us of which we are proud, though we
.cannot deny the great effectiveness and charm of many
of those works. Plato here writes with nothing in view but
the lower kind of effects that imaginative literature can
produce. There can be no doubt that there are times
in the history of the world when only the lower sorts of
art become popular, when imaginative art does aim at
mere popularity, and when its only interest is to appeal
to those susceptibilities of human nature which are com
monest or strongest, because it has to cater for excitement.
Further, it is true in a certain sense, as Plato says, that, the
more indiscriminate you are in what you appeal to, the
easier artistic work becomes ; it is much easier to excite
if you do not care what you excite, or how. In Book III,
where also Plato discusses the effects of imitation, taking
the word in a narrower sense than here, he objects to

DIGRESSION ON POETRY

353

the drama (the literature which is in that sense most
imitative) on the ground that the merely imitative
instinct is probably a symptom of, and certainly stimu
lates, weakness of character, want of personality. Here,
again, we can hardly doubt that the readiness, which he
speaks of, to throw oneself into different characters can
have the effect which he attributes to it; but on the
other hand one of the greatest helps to the development
of character lies in being encouraged to put oneself into
characters above one s ordinary level ; and this help is
what great art gives. But, rightly or wrongly, Plato has
here come to the conclusion that nearly all the imita
tive art of his time has degenerated into indiscriminate
catering for common excitement. He treats art as being
this and only this, and in consequence the whole passage
remains rather an attack upon certain developments of
art than an adequate theoretical treatment of it.

Plato characteristically represents the dispute in which
he here engages, not as one between the moral and
the immoral in literature, but as one between poetry
generally and philosophy generally (607 B sq.). He
quotes sentences to express the feeling which certain
poets on their side have about philosophy and science ;
they regard them as the spinning of cobwebs, or as
audacious and blasphemous talk about things above us.
The same feeling of antagonism between poetry and
philosophy is often expressed now by saying that philo
sophy and science take the interest and the mystery out
of life. To Plato, on the contrary, the real ground of
quarrel seems to be that poetry gets hold only of the
outside of things, appealing always to the most super
ficial susceptibilities of man, while philosophy gets hold
of the real laws and facts of the world. Now there is no

N- * A a

354 LECTURES ON PLATO S REPUBLIC

reason why a poet should not really in his own way be
animated by the same spirit as a philosopher. There is
a point, as Wordsworth indicated, where philosophy and
poetry, imagination and science, meet. It is generally
in their lower phases that poetry and philosophy strike
one another as antagonistic. The greatest philosophers
and the greatest poets have not as a rule felt themselves
to be at enmity. Plato himself is something very like
a great poeL

XVI. THE FUTURE LIFE OF THE

SOUL

[Republic, X. 608 c to end.]

THE second part of Book X, like the first, shows
symptoms of having been left in an unfinished state.
In the opening words which introduce the subject of
immortality, * And yet nothing has been said of the
greatest prizes and rewards of virtue (608 c), there is
no transition from what has gone before. Plato has
not, as they imply, been talking of the rewards of
justice on earth. He first begins to speak of them
in 612 A; and after that there occurs in 614 A another
opening similar to that in 608 c, and this time in its
proper connexion. Thus the argument about immor
tality (608 c to 612 A) does not seem to be in any
organic connexion either with what actually precedes
or with what actually follows it. It would seem that
Plato had two plans in his mind as to how to finish the
Republic 1 .

1 Notice too the fragmentary character of 611 A, where the doctrine
that the number of souls existing must remain constant is introduced
abruptly, and dismissed in a single sentence.

356 LECTURES ON PLATO S REPUBLIC

Taking the section, however, as it stands, we find
that in the first part of it Plato asserts that the soul
is immortal, and gives a brief argument in support of
this belief, asserting that the true nature and capacities
of the soul cannot be seen in its earthly state (608 c to
612 A). He then passes to the question whether justice,
which has been shown to be good in itself apart from
consequences, is not also attended by external rewards ;
and, having pointed out that on the whole it is so in this
life (612 A to 614 A), he winds up the whole work by
discoursing, by means of the Myth of Er, on the destiny
of the soul after death (614 A to end).

608 c to Plato makes no attempt here to deal completely with
the question of the immortality of the soul. In the
Phaedo he treats the whole question, but here it is only
its bearing on morality that concerns him, and the ques
tion is touched upon just far enough to give completion
to his picture of the destiny of the soul on earth. The
point of view from which he argues that the soul is
immortal is one which is in keeping with the whole
subject of the Republic. Throughout the Republic the
question has been, What is the real good and the real evil
of the soul ? In accordance with all that has gone
before, Plato here insists that the only form of evil or
of good that affects the soul is moral or spiritual. Now
moral or spiritual evil does not make the soul die, in the
ordinary sense. Hence, he argues, the soul is not subject
to death in the ordinary sense ; death is a form of evil
which affects the body only.

6nBto Having said that the soul in its essence does not die

612 Al with bodily death, Plato modifies this statement. When

we assert the immortality of the soul we must remember

that this immortality only belongs to it in its true nature,

THE FUTURE LIFE OF THE SOUL 357

and that on earth we never see it in its true nature.
The soul as it exists in union with the human body is
emphatically a composite thing, and the composition is
by no means perfect ; so that the soul as it appears in
its earthly life is liable to all kinds of internal distraction
and inconsistency. The ideal condition of the soul is one
of harmony and perfect synthesis, and this is unattainable
under the conditions of human life ; so that, as we see
the soul here, its original nature is almost entirely
obscured, like the human form of the sea-god Glaucus
in the myth, by overgrowths which come upon it when
it enters the body. If we want to see the immortal
part of it we must look at the element of philosophy
which is in it ; we must imagine what the soul would be
if it could entirely follow the impulse of philosophy,
which would lift it out of this sea in which it is now
sunk and show us its real nature 1 . Aristotle 2 , in the
same way, tells us that the immortality of the soul lies in
vovs, and is to be seen in the speculative capacity of the
mind. With Aristotle and Plato the impulse of the soul,
or of reason, the truly human element in it, is, literally,
to be at one with the eternal being in the world. The
imagery in which the present condition of the soul is
described as one of being sunk in the sea, and there
much beaten about and grown over with various extra
neous growths, is not mere figure of speech. In the
Phaedo 3 we find the idea that our position on the earth

1 Cf. 490 B. See also 5198, where Plato represents the soul as fettered
with leaden weights attached to it at birth, which means the affections to
which the body makes the soul liable; and 518 E, where reason is the
divine thing in the soul, which, however much perverted and rendered
useless, still retains its ancient power. Cf. with the whole passage
Phaedo, 64 A to 68 B.

2 Eth. Nic. X. vii. 8, 9. 3 109 A sq.

N - p - A a 3

358 LECTURES ON PLATC/S &lt; REPUBLIC

is really comparable to being at the bottom of a hollow
or in some deep marshy place ; if we could get up higher
we should come to a region where everything was purer,
and where we should see much more clearly. Both
Plato and Aristotle regarded the earth as imposing all
kinds of restrictions and hindrances on the life of the
soul ; both thought, further, that the fixed stars were
made of finer matter, and that the souls connected with
them had correspondingly finer perceptions l . Their
view of the soul is bound up with a physical theory of
the universe 2 .

The soul then, whatever metamorphosis it may undergo
when it enters the body, is in the essential part of it
immortal ; and the Republic, which may be regarded
(6 12 A) as a picture of the affections which the soul
undergoes and the forms which it assumes in human life,
its highest aspirations, its lowest descents, and the inter
mediate forms of life between them, will fittingly conclude
with the prospect that lies before the soul after death.
612 A to But first Plato returns to the question, which was laid
aside at the outset of the argument in Book II, of
the rewards of justice. Socrates had been asked to show
that justice was the true interest of the soul, without
regard to any external results of justice in this world
or another ; it has now been admitted that he has
done so, and he may turn to the further question of
the facts about the external results of justice. Plato,
having devoted the whole dialogue so far to showing
that the good and evil of man are the good and evil

1 Aristotle, Frag. 19. 1477 A, 31 if., from Cicero, de Nat. Deorum, II. 15.

2 Cf. Timaeus 90 A-D, where Plato asserts that in coming to understand
the laws of nature, e. g. of the motion of the stars, the soul on earth gets
some sort of anticipation of its own true life and nature.

THE FUTURE LIFE OF THE SOUL 359

of the soul, does not, as has sometimes been said, retract
this because he here proceeds to reward the just man
with external goods. He points out first that, assuming
the moral nature of God, we must believe that the good
soul pleases God, and that, whatever appearances there
may be to the contrary, the good man is never neglected
by God ; all things must be well for the good man, except
so far as there is some evil made necessary for him by
previous sin 1 . Again, if we turn to the relations of other
men to those who are just, the case is not as Thrasy-
machus represented it. Experience shows rather that
honesty is good policy. Thrasymachus had appealed to
certain common and admitted facts, Socrates appeals to
other common and admitted facts. But his conclusion
that justice is man s true interest is not drawn from the
account he gives of its usual external results, and
he does not abandon his position that justice is good
apart from all outward consequences, as being nothing
else than the healthy life of the soul.

The purport of the mythical account which now follows 613 E to
of the soul s fate after death is to insist that whatever is e
done by the soul on earth has a direct effect upon its
future. Under all the mythological and poetical forms
in which Plato clothes what he says of the past and future
of the soul, one thought is present, that the immortality
of the soul, involving as it does the continuity of its
existence, adds to the moral responsibility which lies
upon us. The concluding words of the Republic give us
the key-note of the whole passage ; the one thing to study
on earth is how to make oneself better and wiser, not for
this life alone, but for another, and in order that we may
choose wisely when the chance comes to us, as it will, of

1 Cf 379 c to 380 B on the nature of human ill- fortune.

360 LECTURES ON PLATO S REPUBLIC

choosing another form of life. Life on earth is a great
process of learning and gaining experience 1 .

According to the tale of what was seen by Er the
Armenian, who twelve days after he had been killed in
battle was sent back to life, the soul immediately after
death proceeds to a spot where it is judged. The just
souls are there seen ascending, through an opening in the
sky on the right hand, to a thousand years of happiness,
and the unjust descending, through an opening in the
ground on the left, to a thousand years of punishment 2 .
At the same spot, also, perpetual streams of souls are
seen arriving, some coming down by another opening in
the sky from their sojourn in heaven, others coming up
by another opening in the earth from their sojourn below.
As each soul returns, whether from bliss or from pain, it
goes into a meadow, where it rests for seven days before
it chooses a new life upon earth. The ordinary punish
ment allotted to the unjust soul at death is the requital
ten times over of the evil done in life ; and so too the
recompense to the just of the good done in life is tenfold.
But there are other measures of punishment also. Those
whose lives have been very short are differently dealt with.
Some again whose guilt has been extreme are held not
to have been sufficiently punished when they return after
a thousand years, and are sent back again ; and there are
some incurable sinners who are cast for ever into Tar
tarus 3 . In the Gorgias we are told that such souls serve
as examples. The punishment of all who are not incurable
is of the nature of purgatory, and souls generally return
the wiser for what they have undergone. Conversely, the

1 Cf. VI. 498 D.

a Cf. Gorgias, 524 A sqq., and Phaedrus, 248 E to 249 D.

3 Cf Gorgias, 5253 sq., and Phaedo, 1130 sq.

THE FUTURE LIFE OF THE SOUL 361

enjoyment of bliss sometimes leads a soul to make a worse
choice than it would otherwise make of the life to which
it will return. If, however, the soul after being rewarded
makes a wise choice, and goes on living better and better
in each successive life, and getting better and better in
each sojourn in heaven, it at last escapes the necessity of
taking a mortal body again (this we gather from a
passage in the Phaedrus 1 , if we may put it together
with this passage).

At the end of their seven days rest the souls which
have returned from bliss or punishment are brought
a long journey into the presence of the three Fates,
the daughters of Necessity, before whom their choice of
a new life has to be made. The choosing of new lives
takes place at a spot from which the mechanism of the
universe is visible, and of this the myth gives a detailed
description (616 B sqq.) 2 . Plato conceives of the heavens
(ovpavos) as a hollow sphere which revolves with a motion
of its own, and of which the outermost portion is that in
which the fixed stars are. Within it are seven other
hollow spheres containing the orbits of the sun, the moon,
and the five planets which were then known. These
have various revolutions of their own, in the opposite
direction to the uniform motion of the ovpavos as a whole.
All these eight spheres revolve round the earth, which is
the centre of the whole. The whole ovpavos is bound
round with a band of bright light, which is supposed to
mean the Milky Way 3 . This astronomical conception

1 249 A.

2 For the astronomical part of this description see B5ckh, Kleine
Schriften, III. p. 297 foil.

The souls on their journey are said to see this band of light first as
an upright column in front of them. This looks at first as if it was a pole
passing from top to bottom of the sphere, but the word vvofana suggests

362 LECTURES ON PLATO S REPUBLIC*

is combined by Plato with the old notions of Necessity
moving the world, and of destiny being spun by the
Fates ; and the image which results from this com
bination is, of course, not clear or consistent in all its
details. The whole hollow sphere, with the seven
separate spheres with separate motions of their own
fitted in it, forms the whorl (&lt;r&lt;f)6vbv\os) of the spindle
(arpaKros) of Necessity. It is fastened by the Milky
Way and other bands to the hook (ay* torpor) of the
spindle. The shaft (fjXaKdTij) of the spindle passes
right through the whole of the eight spheres; and,
around the point where it enters them, the lips of the
spheres are seen as a continuous surface of eight con
centric rings, of which the colours and the relative widths
are described in accordance with the colours and the
relative distances from the earth ascribed to the heavenly
bodies which move with them. The spindle rests on the
knees of Necessity, and the whole mechanism is turned
by the Fates Clotho, Lachesis, whose name signifies
chance, and Atropos, whose name signifies the inevitable.
The shaft and the hook of the spindle are of adamant,
that is to say they are imperishable and unchanging ;
but the whorl, the system of spheres, that is to say the
whole visible universe, is partly of adamant, partly of
other substances, which means that the universe partly
exhibits uniform and eternal law. and partly irregularity
and change.

a band passing round the sphere, and moreover the shaft of the distaff
passes through the centre of the sphere. The souls must be supposed to
be taken to a point outside the whole sphere; the word VWTOV, in 6i6E (cf.
Phacdms, 247 c), shows this, and further they pass under the throne of
Necessity, upon whose knees the spindle upon which the sphere turns
is resting. From a certain point outside the sphere a band passing
round it would be seen as an upright column.

THE FUTURE LIFE OF THE SOUL 363

Plato further introduces into the image the Pytha
gorean idea that in some way the motions of the heavenly
bodies make up a musical harmony. It arose from the
attempt to find a law regulating the various distances
of these bodies from the earth ; some Pythagoreans
imagined that a relation could be established between
these distances and the intervals between the notes of the
scale. This is the origin of the idea of the music of the
spheres. In Plato s picture a Siren sits upon each of
the rings formed by the spheres, and is carried round
with it. Each Siren sings a single note, and the eight
notes make a scale (ap^oma). The three Fates sing to
the music of the spheres, Lachesis of the past, Clotho of
the present, Atropos of the future.

The choice which the souls make of life is the all-
important crisis in their history. Plato in his description
of their choosing (617 D sqq.) has expressed his opinion
upon Free Will and Necessity. In every human life
there is an element of necessity or of what (so far as the
man himself is concerned) may be called chance ; there
is also an element of choice. This idea is applied here
to the causes which determine the conditions under which
a man is born. In the first place, the order in which the
souls choose is determined for them by lot. In the
second place, however late in the order a soul gets its
choice, it still gets a choice, and, as is proclaimed to them
in the name of the Fates, even the soul that chooses last
will have a life worth living, if it chooses wisely, and
thereafter lives intently (avvTovas). In the third place,
when the soul has made its choice of life it has chosen
its destiny (8eujuuoi&gt;) l ; that is to say, practically, a man s

1 For the Sat/jLOJv cf. Phacdo, 107 D- 108 c, where the Haiftotv takes the soul
back to the other world when it has finished its life on earth. Here, in

1490C

364 LECTURES ON PLATO S REPUBLIC

own will is his destiny, in the sense that he can never
reverse what he has once willed to do, nor its con
sequences 1 . Circumstances, the fact of choice, and the
irrevocableness of choice are the three great elements in
life.

At this choosing of lives, many souls of animals become
men, and vice versa (620 A sq.). As has been seen
already, Plato was quite serious in the idea of continuity
between animal and human life. There is no doubt, too,
that he was perfectly serious in the belief which is
expressed in the whole myth of Er, and particularly
where the soul s choice of a new life is represented
as the outcome of the way in which it has previously
lived that man s conduct in one phase of existence
has a determining effect on his destiny in some future
phase.

620 E, the Fates send with each soul a Sai^cav to attend it through li
and fulfil for it the destiny it has chosen. This is a sort of mythologic
expression of the idea that the man s character or personality determin
his own particular destiny. Cf. Timaeus, go A, where Plato speaks of th
highest element of the soul as a man s Sai^cav. It is easy to pass from thi
to the notion of attendant spirits watching over men s lives, and that *
the connexion between the sense of 8ai^uv here and the sense in whi&lt;
great men are said to be worshipped as Saipovcs (5400).

1 In the fliajv TrapaSery/icmi (samples of lives) which are thrown before th
souls to choose from, all kinds of circumstances in various combination:
are present in a determinate character, but the one vital element of the de
terminate character of the soul itself, i/ vx*? 5 T " ? J is sa ^ n t to ^ e present
because it is fated that the soul in choosing a given life should becom
like what it chooses. Here we have the old distinction of the external
of life and the accual vital principle itself; the soul is to choose th
external conditions of its life, but by its choice of life it becomes what i
is to be v 6i8B).

THE END.

JC 71 .P6 N4 1901

SMC

Nettleship, Richard

Lewis, 1846-1892.
Lectures on The Republic

of Plato /
AZU-7479 (mcsk)

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